third series

volume xv

part 2

2002

Table of Contents
Criminalized Abnormality, Moral Etiology, and Redemptive Suffering in the Secondary Strata of the Taiping jing grgoire espesset Family Ties and Buddhist Nuns in Tang China: Two Studies jinhua chen Buddhist Mummification in Taiwan: Two Case Studies douglas gildow and marcus bingenheimer A Danggi Temple in Taipei: Spirit-Mediums in Modern Urban Taiwan shin-yi chao

51

87

129

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grgoire espesset

Criminalized Abnormality, Moral Etiology, and Redemptive Suffering in the Secondary Strata of the Taiping jing
n earlier paper of mine devoted to writing and orality in the Taiping . jing ( Scripture of Great Peace ) dealt mostly with material from the major textual stratum, or layer, of the text generally called A by sinologists. 1 It focused on the origin of knowledge and the emergence of an orthodoxy as a historical phenomenon (at an epistemological level) comparable to the political principle of centralized, unified power, a process in which writing played a major role. But ways of writing also play a great part in two minor textual strata or layers of the Taiping jing , generally referred to as B- and C-text. Stratum B has been characterized as presenting a Heavenly Lord ( tianjun ), a Major god ( dashen ) and Divine Men ( shenren ), who introduce various bureaucratic procedures of the unseen world to which men submit after their death. A recurrent procedure is the permanent recording of human deeds on administrative documents by zealous divine officials of this Heavenly bureaucracy so as to determine each individuals possible eligibility for a celestial office following death. 2 Stratum B comThe author is indebted to Donald Harper, John Lagerwey, and Michael J. Puett for reading drafts of this paper and providing insightful criticism.
1 Espesset, Revelation Between Orality and Writing in Early Imperial China: The Epistemology of the Taiping jing , BMFEA 74 (2002), pp. 66100. The best bibliography on T P J studies appears in Chen Ligui , ed., Liang Han zhuzi yanjiu lunzhu mulu 19121996 (Taibei: Hanxue yanjiu zhongxin, 1998), pp. 391407 (205 items, no. 5227 431); and Chen Ligui, ed., Liang Han zhuzi yanjiu lunzhu mulu 19972001 (Taibei: Hanxue yanjiu zhongxin, 2003), pp. 194202 (98 items, no. 2421518). The stratigraphy of the T P J was first analyzed by Xiong Deji , Taiping jing de zuozhe he sixiang ji qi yu Huangjin he Tianshidao de guanxi , Lishi yanjiu 4 (1962), pp. 815. Subsequent attempts were based more or less on his sectioning of the material into three forms: the first (called A by Western sinologists) is entitled questions and answers ; the second, prose , or C; and the third, dialogue , or B. According to Xiong, forms 2 and 3 are closely related. Chapters of dubious nature including the four juan written in metascript (the still non-deciphered doubled characters , and three juan , consisting of pictures probably of late origin are not classified in Xiongs three-fold scheme. 2 This important aspect of writing in T P J also reflects the development of the civil administration during the first centuries of imperial China. On this subject, see Etienne Balazs, La

grgoire espesset
bines dialogue with discursive elements, whereas stratum C, in contrast, strictly eschews dialogue. Takahashi Tadahikos careful study of B-material, a stratum that he does not call dialogue , as Xiong Deji did, has led him to divide it into two substrata: a conversational form , which includes only passages of purely dialogue style, and a lecturing form made up of the remaining non-dialogue parts. 3 According to Takahashi, these two substrata contain the oldest parts of the extant Taiping jing material, but his line of argument is far from convincing and the issue remains open to discussion. 4 Following Hachiya Kunio, who included in his stratigraphy quotations of the Taiping jing collected by Wang Ming in his critical edition, Jens stergrd Petersen has argued that textual elements from the later, abridged edition of the text, the Taiping jing chao ( Transcription of the Scripture of Great Peace ) which happen to be similar in style and themes to B- or C-material, should also be included in these strata. For example, a long fragment in juan 9 should be included in stratum B. 5 The version of Taiping jing included in the Zhengtong daozang
bureaucratie cleste: Recherches sur lconomie et la socit de la Chine traditionnelle (Paris: Gallimard, 1968), pp. 1367. 3 See Takahashi Tadahiko , Taiheiky no shis kz , Ty. bunka kenkyjo kiy 95 (1984), pp. 29697. Except for the division of Bmaterial into two substrata, and minor shifts from one stratum to another, Takahashis classification into three forms is derived from Hachiya Kunio , Taiheiky ni okeru genji bunsho, ky, sh, ts no shis , Ty bunka kenkyjo kiy 92 (1983), pp. 3638, which itself is derived from Xiongs pioneering stratigraphy. In a further study, Takahashi isolated and described the content of 36 fragments from chapters corresponding to both substrata; see Takahashi, Taiheiky no kaiwatai no seikaku ni tsuite , Ty bunka kenkyjo kiy 105 ( 1988), pp. 243 75. Benjamin Penny, A System of Fate Calculation in Taiping Jing , Papers on Far Eastern History 41 (1990), p. 6, n. 7, and Barbara Hendrischke, The Concept of Inherited Evil in the Taiping Jing , East Asian History 2 (1991), pp. 45, have criticized Takahashis distinction of these substrata as unnecessary, first because both are actually entwined in the same juan , chapters and pages sometimes even in the same lines, and secondly because their strong similarity suggests a common source. Chap. 179, for example, is made out of four consecutive paragraphs of varying size, all of which open with the particle wei , and in which discursive and dialogue forms alternate; see Wang Ming , ed., Taiping jing hejiao ( Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1960; 1979; hereafter cited as T P J H J ), pp. 52443. Wangs still widely used critical edition should be emended after Takahashi Tadahiko, Taiheiky gk no hiten ni tsuite , Tky gakugei daigaku kiy, jinbun kagaku 36 (1985), pp. 23144; Chen Zengyue , Taiping jing hejiao shiyi , Zhongguo Daojiao 31.3 (1994), pp. 2528; idem, Taiping jing hejiao buji , Wenxian 62.4 (1994), pp. 21928; and Yu Liming , Taiping jing hejiao jiaodui bushuo , Guji zhengli yanjiu xuekan 1 (2002), pp. 8890. 4 E.g., Hendrischke, Inherited Evil, p. 5 , n. 14 , regards A-material as the earliest. 5 The Daozang location is page 11 b 14 a (see following n.), equivalent to T P JH J , pp. 710 12. See Jens stergrd Petersen, The Taiping Jing and the A.D. 102 Clepsydra Reform, AO 53 (1992), pp. 14142.

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is divided into fifty-seven juan (numbered, but untitled), which are in turn divided into 129 chapters (numbered and carrying titles). The numerical sequences of both juan and chapters are incomplete. In addition, the Dunhuang manuscript catalogued as Stein 4226 (MS S. 4226 ) in the British Library provides the full table of contents (but unfortunately not the text itself) of a sixth-century Taiping jing in which the incomplete structure of the Zhengtong daozang version fits almost perfectly. The Dunhuang table of contents indicates a total of 170 juan , and these are grouped into ten sections , each having seventeen juan . 6 The chapters on which the present study will focus come from juan 110 , 111 , 112 , and 114 of the extant Taiping jing (that printed in Zhengtong daozang , just mentioned). Moreover, the four juan appear in section 7 ( geng bu ) of the table of contents as seen in MS S. 4226 . The twenty-four chapters that they contain are mostly characterized as B-material by modern sinologists. But, considering the affinities between both secondary strata, from a thematic and linguistic point of view, I refer to them by the generic term of non-A in this paper. Following Hachiya and Petersen, I also quote passages of Taiping jing chao that may be characterized as non-A material, notably from juan 9 , which is supposedly a rsum of the lost section 9 ( ren bu ) of the Taiping jing .

Although a general consensus on the terminology of the Taiping jing strata seems to prevail, the definition of a stratum still depends mostly on its rhetorical form (that is, dialogue or non dialogue, prose or verse) and on the personae involved with perhaps the exception of Petersen, whose definitions sometimes lack supportive evidence and thus remain cryptic. 7 However, both criteria arguably have their own limitations. To begin with the rhetorical form, it is indeed far from being as homogeneous and clear-cut as one may infer from Xiong Dejis three-fold stratigraphy.
6 One may find T P J in the Daozang as identified via Kristofer Schipper, ed., Concordance du Tao-tsang: Titres des ouvrages (Paris: EFEO, 1975; hereafter, C T T ), no. 1101, j. 35119. The contents of S. 4226 were first published by Yoshioka Yoshitoyo in Tonk bon Taiheiky ni tsuite , Ty bunka kenkyjo kiy 22 (1961), pp. 1103; rev. edn., Dky to Bukky (Tokyo: Kokusho kankkai, 1970) 2, pp. 9114. It shows that T P J in the Zhengtong daozang (hereafter, ZD ) partly preserved five out of ten sections of the 6th-c. scripture and that T P JC contains abstracts of four out of the five missing sections. The last section and its abstract are both lost. (See also my Le MS Stein 4226 Tai ping bu juan di er dans lhistoire du Taosme mdival, forthcoming.) 7 Petersen, Taiping Jing and Clepsydra Reform, has adopted Takahashis distinction of two substrata. He characterizes them, respectively, as relating the recommendation by a dashen to the tianjun of a person eligible for office in the celestial bureaucracy (Takahashis conversational form) and, somewhat abruptly, as describing the economic and religious administration of hunger refugees in the Huai River delta (Takahashis lecturing form).

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Chapter 106 (sect. 5 , j . 70 ) provides a good example of the limitations of any purely stylistic characterization of the content of the Taiping jing . In this chapter, generally regarded as belonging to the Atext, the dialogue elements actually boil down to the mere indication of the opening question by a disciple (properly formulated as: A Real Man asks respectfully ) and the occurrence of shan zai (Good indeed!), used to separate the question from its answer whose speaker remains unnamed. 8 Strikingly, the rest of this four-page chapter is entirely discursive and, furthermore, never mentions the Heavenly Master ( tianshi ) assumed to characterize the majority of A-stratum dialogues. Besides, the abridged and edited content of the Taiping jing chao throughout exemplifies how literary elements formerly of A-style dialogue form may be rewritten into non-A dialogue, by means of such tricks as altering the mentions of the alternating speakers and deleting the most colloquial interjections, or even into plain monologue (discursive) text, by deleting all interjections and mentions of speakers and turning what were formerly questions between interlocutors into silent objections raised by the orator himself in the course of his solitary reflection. As for the various personae involved, comparing chapters of the Taiping jing , passages of the Taiping jing chao , and the numerous Taiping jing quotations from other sources conveniently inserted by Wang Ming in his critical edition shows that, at least from a strictly functional point of view, the Divine Man and Real Men staged in some dialogues may be interpreted as rhetoric substitutes for the Heavenly Master and his disciples specific to A-material. In such conditions, the best way to deal with the extant Great Peace corpus would be to focus on the doctrines and beliefs expressed in the so-called strata (not to mention dubious substrata) rather than take their eventual rhetoric form at face value. 9 In this respect, the present study will appropriately show that, while discussing themes seemingly typical to non-A material, A-material often proves fully relevant. Now to summarize the characteristics of the content of A-stratum: a master delivers lessons to a group of disciples, tackling various issues relating mostly to cosmology and episteT P JH J , p. 276. For a further analysis of the dialogue form, see Barbara Hendrischke, The Dialogues between Master and Disciples in the Scripture on Great Peace (Taiping jing ), in Lee Cheuk Yin and Chan Man Sing , eds., A Daoist Florilegium: A Festschrift Dedicated to Professor Liu Tsun-yan on His Eighty-fifth Birthday (Hong Kong: The Commercial Press Ltd., 2002), pp. 185234. Despite valuable remarks on the definition of A- and B-text dialogue forms and the difficulty in firmly circumscribing the corresponding strata, the rhetoric form rather than the content remains the prevailing criterion throughout Hendrischkes paper.
8 9

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mology, plus, in some instances, to sociopolitical concerns (generally dealt with from a symbolic point of view). As a result, sociologically and historically contextualizing elements pertaining to this stratum remain highly problematic, and the reader is given the impression of wandering over a blurred landscape as random themes dictate. Even the toponymy and chronology at times referred to have been standardized (for example, a generic Southern Mountain, nanshan ), if not fully conceptualized (the successive reigns, through three ages, of Three Augusts, Five Emperors, Three Kings, and Five Hegemons). 10 Hence this part of the text may be defined as a treatise on universal order to be restored, and watchfully maintained, by means of a strict adequacy of all possible phenomena to cosmic laws, provided that all beings first and foremost the earthly ruler of mankind comply with these revealed laws. Though the Taiping jing non-A-material analyzed in the present study undeniably shares a general worldview with A-stratum, I believe that this material emerged against a specific social, historical, and ideological background, and I am convinced that, whichever stratum it conventionally belongs to, it forms a consistent piece. My view is that what we grasp from this background echoes the earliest Taoist communities and seems reminiscent of some of the features of their parish life. Concomitantly, this study will also supplement our knowledge of Chinese beliefs regarding life after death, Taoist bureaucratic views of the unseen world, and the relationship between the religious and medical spheres. 11
See n. 77, below. On various Han and early-Six Dynasties beliefs regarding life after death, the beyond, and related matters, see Poo Mu-chou, Ideas concerning Death and Burial in Pre-Han and Han China, AM 3d ser. 3.2 (1990), pp. 2562; Poo Mu-chou , Zhuixun yiji zhi fu, Zhongguo gudai de xinyang shijie ( Taibei: Yunchen wenhua, 1995), pp. 195227; Ursula-Angelika Cedzich, Ghosts and Demons, Law and Order: Grave Quelling Texts and Early Taoist Liturgy, Taoist Resources 4.2 (1993), pp. 2335; Michael Loewe, Chinese Ideas of Life and Death: Faith, Myth and Reason in the Han Period ( 202 B.C.-A.D. 220) (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982), pp. 2537; Anna Seidel, Tokens of Immortality in Han Graves, Numen 29 (1982), pp. 79122; idem, Geleitbrief an die Unterwelt: Jenseitsvorstellungen in den Graburkunden der Spteren Han Zeit, in Gert Naundorf, Karl-Heinz Pohl, and Hans-Hermann Schmidt, eds., Religion und Philosophie in Ostasien: Festschrift fr Hans Steininger zum 65. Gerburtstag (Wrzburg: Knigshausen & Neumann, 1985), pp. 161 84; idem, Post-mortem Immortality or: The Taoist Resurrection of the Body, in Shaul Shaked, David Shulman, and Gedaliahu G. Stroumsa, eds., Gilgul: Essays on Transformation, Revolution and Permanence in the History of Religions Dedicated to R. J. Zwi Werblowsky (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987), pp. 22337; Y Ying-shih, Life and Immortality in the Mind of Han China, H JAS 25 (1965), pp. 80122; and idem, O Soul, Come Back! A Study in the Changing Conceptions of the Soul and Afterlife in Pre-Buddhist China, H JAS 47.2 (1987), pp. 36395. On the bureaucratic facets of the unseen world and mans judicial dealings with it, see Donald Harper, Resurrection in Warring States Popular Religion, Taoist Resources 5.2 (1994), pp. 1328; Peter Nickerson, Taoism, Death, and Bureaucracy in Early Medieval China, Ph.D. diss. (University of California, Berkeley, 1996), pp. 90101, 13474; Anna Seidel, Traces of
10 11

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HEAVEN AS A META-EMPIRE

To better understand the issues at stake in Taiping jing non-A material, we need first to reconstruct the general worldview that underlies its content. Several excerpts to be quoted in this paper provide a general view of the bureaucratic and anthropomorphic nature of the unseen world. 12 For instance, a passage from Taiping jing chao , 13 which describes the circulation of documents up and down the administrative hierarchy, depicts the transmission of the Heavenly Lords decrees to a Major god, then to a director of agriculture ( sinong ) who instructs the subordinates in each administrative circumscription. Subordinates have to report to the director of agriculture. Should they fail to do so on time, the director of agriculture would report to the Major god who, in turn, would report to the Heavenly Lord himself. 14 It is worth noting that in this passage no explicit distinction is drawn between the divine and human spheres, and the decrees of Heaven apparently reach down to the regions ( zhou ), commanderies ( jun ), and states ( guo ) of the world of Man (but we should not forget that in the Chinese mind, which was not conditioned by the Platonic legacy, such an absolute distinction was and still is not necessary). Such textual elements enable us to reconstruct the bureaucratic hierarchy of the divine instances that rule the celestial world under the supreme authority of the Heavenly Lord, of whom chapter 180 (sect. 7 , j . 111 ) says that he is prescient ( yu zhi ) and spontaneously knows all the secret matters in Heaven, under Earth, and in the realm of Man. 15 This omniscient, divine monarch,
Han Religion In Funeral Texts Found In Tombs, in Akizuki Kanei , ed., Dky to shky bunka (Tokyo: Hirakawa shuppansha, 1987), pp. 678714; and idem, Early Taoist Ritual, CEA 4 (1988), pp. 199204. On the influence of the bureaucratic nature of power on religious ideas, see Jean Levi, Identit et bureaucratie divines en Chine ancienne, Revue de lHistoire des Religions 205.4 (1988), pp. 44765. See also the bibliographic references compiled by Donald Harper in Daniel L. Overmyer, with David N. Keightley, Edward L. Shaughnessy, Constance A. Cook and Donald Harper, Chinese Religions The State of the Field (Part I); Early Religious Traditions: The Neolithic Period through the Han Dynasty (ca. 4000 B.C.E. to 220 C.E.), The Journal of Asian Studies 54.1 (1995), pp. 15260. On religion and healing (also the name of a recent research project run at the Academia Sinica, Institute of History & Philology), see Lin Fu-shih , Shilun Zhongguo zaoqi Daojiao duiyu yiyao de taidu , Taiwan zongjiao yanjiu 1.1 (2000), pp. 10742; idem, Jibing zhong jie zhe, Zhongguo zaoqi de Daojiao yixue (Taibei: Sanmin shuju , 2001); and Michel Strickmann (Bernard Faure, ed.), Chinese Magical Medicine (Stanford: Stanford U.P., 2002). 12 See also Y, O Soul, Come Back!, pp. 382 84 . 13 On this late abstracted, obviously rewritten, rendition of T P J that may date back to the tenth century, see Wang Ming, Lun Taiping jing chao jiabu zhi wei , Lishi yuyan yanjiusuo jikan 18 (1948), pp. 37584; and Li Gang , Ye lun Taiping jing chao jiabu ji qi yu Daojiao Shangqing pai zhi guanxi , Daojia wenhua yanjiu 4 (1994), pp. 28499. 14 T P JC 9 , pp. 12 ab ( T P JH J , p. 710 ). 15 T P JH J , p. 544 .

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assimilated to the Polar Star, 16 stands as the celestial, idealized counterpart of the emperor of men: a supreme, divine entity who acts on behalf of Heaven rather than a personification of Heaven itself. 17 Besides our tianjun , the Taiping jing also contains six references to a Lord of the Most High, or Lords of the Most High ( taishang zhi jun ). 18 One of these occurrences, abbreviated to taishang jun and simply transcribed as tianjun in Taiping jing chao , 19 suggests that at least in the views of the editor of the abridged version both expressions may be regarded as synonyms. 20 The first lines of chapter 193 (sect. 7 , j . 114 ) deal briefly with this divine entity (or these divine entities), said to be ranked above the spirits , to be prescient, and to know what common gods are up to before they speak, and for whom gods as well as men feel reverential awe. Then the text states abruptly that above the nine sovereigns , who remain unexplained, are nine lords , who are relatives of, or close to , the Most High. (In the
16 Beiji , the apparent center of the nocturnal sky rather than the circumpolar five-star constellation bearing the same name; see saki Shji , Chgoku no seiza no rekishi ( Tokyo: Yzankaku, 1987), pp. 21016. Thus the divine monarch occupies the astronomical center of Heaven just like the emperor of men embodies the symbolic center of the world. See also n. 23, below. 17 In T P J the use of the word tian (Heaven) and the compound tianjun (Heavenly Lord) clearly follows specific concerns. For instance, though it may occasionally be said to have feelings, Heaven, unlike the Heavenly Lord, is generally not staged as a talking character. On the other hand, the Heavenly Lord, unlike Heaven which is epistemologically inseparable from Earth, has no such cosmological counterpart. Yet what both instances refer to may at times partially overlap, especially as regards moral aspects. 18 In chap. 182 (sect. 7 , j. 111 ; p. 555 of Wangs edition), an isolated occurrence providing no decisive information; in chap. 192 (p. 594), where the taishang zhi jun informs parents and relatives of men of incomparable filial piety of their conduct; in chap. 193 (p. 594 and 595; see text below); and in chap. 198 (p. 610), where taishang zhi jun is said to be kept informed of any evil deed, even minor. 19 See T P JH J , p. 555 , n. 26 . For the sake of completeness, it should be added that the author of the abstracted text has also standardized as tianjun ( T P JC 5, p. 1a; 6, p. 3a) two isolated occurrences of the compound tiangong (Heavenly Duke, or the Honorable Heaven) in T P J A-text, both put into the masters mouth; see chaps. 105 (sect. 5, j. 69) and 129 (sect. 6, j. 88), T P JH J , pp. 262; 263, n. 1; 334; 335, n. 1. Donald Harper has encountered the graph tiangong (Heaven Sire in his own translation) in epigraphic material of the 1st-c. ad; Contracts with the Spirit World in Han Common Religion: The Xuning Prayer and Sacrifice Documents of A.D. 79, CEA 14 (2004), pp. 23637, n. 28. Harper further emphasizes the similarity of the structure and function of the spirit world in both sources (p. 266) and wonders about the possible identity of tiangong in both sources, and of the divine entities referred to as tiangong and tianjun (pp. 25759). 20 Throughout A-material, taishang has an adjectival function and belongs to the common words whereas in the other two strata it may be interpreted as a variant or equivalent of Heaven (tian ), perhaps with stronger religious and hierarchical implications. It should also be remembered that Taishang is one of the three hypostasis of Laozi in early Heavenly Master Taoism (Tianshi dao ), the central one, with Wushang on the left and Xuanlao on the right. In T P J , the former compound still belongs to the common words (adjectival, i.e. highest or supreme) while the latter does not appear.

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Taiping jing , qin admits both readings, often in a compound, but the present, isolated occurrence does not allow us to choose definitely between one or the other.) Each one of them has his own affairs to take care of, and all other gods obey them respectfully. Minor gods may not know the designs of the nine sovereigns, to say nothing of ordinary men. Only those with special qualities (literally: a saintly heart and good hearing) may visualize their (the nine sovereigns) compositions : they are just like regular compositions but a halo radiates from them, 21 as their text is written with silver on slips of gold. These divine records are in the private quarters of the Heavenly Lord and duplicates are kept in the Central Pole. 22 Back in chapter 180 we read that the Heavenly Lord also has his own personal registers, 23 in which are registered men who are destined for divine ascension. Being the ruler of a bureaucratic world as much as head of a pantheon, our Heavenly Lord reigns over an apparatus of anonymous, numberless gods , also designated as Heavenly gods , or , or but we see further on that there are also chthonian entities or multitudes of gods . In chapter 188 (sect. 7 , j . 112 ) we find an evocation of the hastening emissaries of Heaven who get about in chariots made of mist with a flying dragon-drawn carriage, followed by ordered ranks of divine immortals who all carry their account records . 24 Chapter 180 informs us that gods could not exist by themselves, their basic function, as heavenly emissaries, being to submit memoranda , or , on human good and evil deeds to the Heavenly Lord. 25 The same chapter adds that heavenly envoys dwelling in the human body as heart gods are in perma21 Jingguang , literally: a refined radiance. For an occurrence of jingguang conferred on a newly deified person, see also n. 162 and text, below. 22 T P JH J , pp. 594 95. The Central Pole refers to the seeming center of the sky around which all other stars rotate, held to be the highest point of the heavens. See Yunji qiqian (ca. 1028), Zhang Junfang ( ca. 961ca. 1042), ed. (ZD , fasc. 677702; C T T 1032) 18, p. 3b; 24, p. 1b. Today Gouchen 1 ( UMi) but, in Han times, probably the Pivot of Heaven, Tianshu (GC17443 Cam); see saki, Chgoku no seiza no rekishi , p. 297. On the circular movement of the Celestial North Pole and the identification of the polar star, see also Lopold de Saussure, Les Origines de lastronomie chinoise: H. Les anciennes toiles polaires, T P 20 (1921), pp. 86116; saki, Chgoku no seiza no rekishi , pp. 21018. 23 Here called: the personal registers of the Heavenly Lord of the Northern Pole (T P JH J , p. 546; on , see n. 16, above). Chap. 198 also mentions (T P JH J , p. 612). 24 T P JH J , p. 574 . This lively depiction happens to match a picture appearing in T P JC 6 , pp. 18ab, together with a caption. Wangs edition includes the caption (T P JH J , p. 467) but the picture has been omitted. A similar carriage appears in the scroll picture bearing the number of chap. 162 (sect. 6, j. 99) in T P J , with a Venerable of the Center and two official aides on board. See the plates appended to Wangs edition. 25 T P JH J , pp. 544 45 ; also chap. 201 ( T P JH J , p. 619 ).

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nent audiovisual contact with Heaven to scrupulously report all the deeds good and evil of their host. 26 Such seems to be the function of another divine entity, called the director of fate, siming (whom we meet again, later), who is said to reside permanently in the organ heart of each human being in order to arbitrate his hosts rights and wrongs. 27 In Taiping jing shengjun mizhi , a collection of stanzas from Taiping jing exclusively concerning shouyi (keeping the One) meditation and visualization techniques that may date back to the end of the Tang, we even read that in the body there are permanently six divinities, directors of fate , who discuss together the faults of men. 28 As regards such physiological watchdogs, or rather watchgods, the following passage from chapter 199 (sect. 7 , j . 114 ) deserves to be translated entirely to catch more than a mere glimpse of what may be called the divine condition: (Through) transformation (gods) exit and enter where there is no aperture, changing their size at will. Ordinary people cannot perceive the gods (but) gods recognize each other spontaneously. (Gods) are entirely made of pneuma ( qi ), how could there be places where they cannot go? There is always a difference of intensity 29 between the halo ( jingguang ) of major gods and minor gods. They always enjoy a longevity which is increased ninefold . (When) they are ultimately converted to benevolent conduct, their longevity also is unlimited. They ascend to the highest and descend to the lowest, exit and enter (where) there is no interstice.
26 T P JH J , p. 545 . Not surprisingly, then, we find in chap. 134 (sect. 6 , j. 92 ) that heart gods also guarantee mens life. Were they to leave the body, death would ensue (T P JH J , p. 374). Max Kaltenmark, The Ideology of the Tai-ping ching , in Holmes Welch and Anna Seidel, eds., Facets of Taoism: Essays in Chinese Religion (New Haven: Yale U.P., 1979), pp. 36 37 , has argued that the Heavenly Lord appears to be identical with the spirit of the heart ... which is present in the interior of the human body. In my opinion, the passage he refers to does not contain any such statement. 27 See chaps. 187 ( T P JH J , p. 572 ) and 195 ( T P JH J , p. 600 ). So it is the director of fate (siming ) who dwells within a mans heart, not the director of agriculture ( sinong ), as wrongly assumed in Kaltenmark, The Ideology of the Tai-ping ching , p. 37. 28 See Taiping jing shengjun mizhi ( undated; ZD , fasc. 755 ; C T T 1102 ), 6a (appearing in T P JH J , p. 742). On shouyi practices in T P J , see Yoshioka Yoshitoyo, Taiheiky no shu-itsu shis to Bukky , in Dky to Bukky (Tokyo: Kokusho kankkai, 1976) 3, pp. 31551; Ding Yizhuang and Liu Dongmei , Taiping jing zhong shouyi qianshi , Zongjiaoxue yanjiu 2 (1986), pp. 6773; in Taoism, see Livia Kohn, Guarding the One: Concentrative Meditation in Taoism, in Livia Kohn and Sakade Yoshinobu, eds., Taoist Meditation and Longevity Techniques (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1989), pp. 12558; in Buddhism, see Yoshioka Yoshitoyo, Bukky no zenp to Dky no shu-itsu , in Dky to Bukky 3, pp. 287314. 29 Zengjian , lit.: to increase and decrease.

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There is neither exteriority nor interiority 30 (for them), as if (they were) in perpetual motion. If they wish to stop or move, they stop or move spontaneously. By breathing they become divine 31 and they look radiant. From top to bottom (of the hierarchy) there is a schedule, and when it is their turn to move, they must return on time. Also, they cannot act independently, but require superiors and inferiors . Each has his commission, each his register with instructions , each his rank. They must be aware and act with determination without disobeying, clear about what they are doing. Each makes his merit ( gong )manifest, makes proposals about what he knows. They have no private aims, but act as instructed, do not depart from the content of the instructions, dedicate themselves to improvement, without ever resting, and stop (only) when commanded to. 32 There is a sharp contrast between the first part of the quotation, which heightens the freedom of gods as regards the material restraints of the human, mortal condition, and the second part, where this metaphysical freedom dissolves in a bureaucratic system strictly organized into a hierarchy and subject to office work constraints. This hierarchy basically distinguishes between major ( dashen ) and minor gods ( xiaoshen ) or elsewhere, rather than this well-known, binary classification, a typically Taiping jing -style, three-fold scale, including medium gods ( zhongshen ). 33 Dashen , in some special instances, explicitly refers
30 Possibly reminiscent of such evocations of the Tao as in the opening sentence of Huainan zi 10, a work edited by Liu An ( ca. 180122 bc): Tao is supremely high and supremely profound . . . (it) envelops the universe but has no exteriority nor interiority; see D. C. Lau, ed., A Concordance to the Huainanzi/Huainan zi zhuzi suoyin ( Hong Kong: The Commercial Press Ltd., ICS series, 1992), p. 82. 31 A quotation of T P J from what is probably a Tang-dynasty Taoist work, Daodian lun (ZD , fasc. 764; C T T 1130) 4, p. 8b, states that the embryo inhales natural, spontaneous pneuma but, once born, man breathes Yin and Yang pneuma, which are called dispersing . Those who successfully revert to spontaneous pneuma will live whereas those who keep on breathing dispersing pneuma will die ( T P JH J , pp. 699700). The idea of perfectly divine breathing certainly refers to such views. According to the next T P J quotation from the same source (Daodian lun 4, p. 9a), heavenly gods feed on pneuma ( T P JH J , p. 739). On the concept of qi , central to Han times cosmology, see Chen Ligui, Handai de qihua yuzhoulun ji qi yingxiang , Daojia wenhua yanjiu 8 (1995), pp. 24866. 32 T P JH J , pp. 613 14 . 33 The occurrence of the generic, plural expression zhu dashen (i.e. major gods) in chaps. 179 ( T P JH J , pp. 529; 537; 539), 183 ( T P JH J , p. 559), 184 ( T P JH J , p. 560), and 197 (sect. 7, j. 114; T P JH J , p. 607), should be set apart from all other occurrences of dashen (Major god) as a single instance (on which, see below). The expression dashen xiaoshen appears in chaps. 193 (T P JH J , p. 595) and 199 (T P JH J , p. 613) of T P J . Taiping jing chao refers twice (T P JC 8, pp. 16a, 18b) to dashen , zhongshen and xiaoshen , which can be reached by the adept trying to obtain the Tao (T P JH J , p. 696) or meditating on different kinds of pneuma related to the monthly marker , i.e. the direction the Northern Dipper (beidou , i.e. Ursa Major) is pointing at each month ( T P JH J , p. 698); and once to dashen

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to a single divine entity who is under the Heavenly Lords direct command. A quotation of Taiping jing in the fifth- or sixth-century Daoyao lingqi shengui pinjing compares the Major god with a lawful minister of the State and his position with a public office of governmental assistant. As such he is not permitted the slightest privacy, otherwise the Heavenly Lord would demote him, nor does he dare to abandon himself to laziness. 34 The following passage of Taiping jing chao , which I assume to correspond to the title of chapter 290 (sect. 9 , j . 146 ) in Dunhuang MS S. 4226 , 35 tells us more about that celestial worthy: The High Sovereign, the most venerable of divine beings, calls himself Duke of accumulated pneuma . 36 He is also called Major god ( dashen ). He stands permanently to the Heavenly Lords left and presides over the management of the writing of documents of the Hall of Brightness ( mingtang ). 37 Further in the same passage, this Heavenly Lords right hand man who stands on his left (in accordance with Chinese logic) is said to be the supreme commander of all divinities, a kind of chief executiveofficer in charge of all gods, each with his own department . 38 We learn from chapter 180 that the Major god has assistants ( fuxiang ) an office said to be similar to that of State minister ( gong qing ) in human society of mortal origin, men of great saintliness and virtue who have ascended to Heaven and act as trustworthy managers of the documents transferred to the Hall of Brightness, 39 and from chapter
xiaoshen (T P JC 9, p. 13a; T P JH J , p. 711) to express the hierarchy of divine officials attending the audience of Heaven . 34 See Daoyao lingqi shengui pinjing ( ZD , fasc. 875 ; C T T 1201 ), pp. 1 b 2 a ( T P JH J , p. 737). 35 Weiqi dashen sheng shang mingtang wenshu (col. 249 ). 36 The expression accumulated pneuma refers to both the subtle corporeality of these dematerialized beings and their dietary habits. See also n. 31, above. 37 T P JC 9 , p. 11 b ( T P JH J , p. 710 ). On the Hall of Brightness, see Lon Vandermeersch, Le rgime rituel: Le Palais des lumires, in tudes sinologiques (Paris: PUF, 1994), pp. 191 208; Hwang Ming-chorng , Ming-tang : Cosmology, Political Order and Monuments in Early China, Ph.D. diss. (Harvard University, 1996). In T P J the cosmological symbolism of the Hall of Brightness shows, for instance, through chap. 60, where the mingtang is the second of six positions occupied by Penal Laws and Virtue during their twelve-month cycle of expansion and withdrawal ( T P JH J , pp. 1056); for a detailed review of the xingde system from this chapter of T P J , see Yu Tao , Taiping jing xingde tushi de yixue biaoxian ji qita , Zhouyi yanjiu 42.4 (1999), pp. 4348; on the history of xingde cycles, see Marc Kalinowski, transl. Phyllis Brooks, The Xingde Texts from Mawangdui, EC 2324 (199899), pp. 125202. A fragment of T P JC also alludes to the mingtang in astro-calendrical context; T P JC 4, p. 7a (T P JH J , p. 213). 38 T P JH J , p. 710 . 39 T P JH J , p. 544 .

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183 (sect. 7 , j . 111 ) that men of superior knowledge are brought before the Major god to carry out missions for him, that is, to become his personal emissaries. 40 As for the minor gods, their purpose is probably best summed up in this excerpt from chapter 180 : the Major god sends minor gods with orders. 41 Minor gods are the lesser civil servants of Heaven, divine pencil-pushers sent down to the world of men to deal with the daily tasks of the bureaucratic routine. All these divine bureaucrats are expected to embody the public realm of idealized human civil service total devotion to and identification with their duty and no doubt the same attitude is expected from the Emperors subjects here below. This Heavenly sphere is not irremediably foreign to mankind, at least to its cosmic elite. According to Taiping jing chao , individuals of the eighth rank of that nine-fold hierarchy seemingly peculiar to the Great Peace texts 42 (former ordinary men who, by studying ceaselessly, successfully made their way to the highest reaches and eventually transcended their mortal condition) reside in the Purple Palace of the Northern Pole, 43 that is, they belong to the same constellation as the Emperor in Heaven . 44 Here again, we find the divine realm associated with the nocturnal, astronomic sky, a standard
41 T P JH J , p. 546 . T P JH J , p. 557. Jiuren , expounded with notable variants according to textual origins in T P J , chaps. 53 (sect. 3, j. 40), 56 (sect. 3, j. 42), and 108; T P JC 4, pp. 14b16a; and in a quotation of T P J from the 5th-c. Zhengyi fawen taishang wailu yi (ZD , fasc. 991; C T T 1243), 4a. The nine grades may be summarized as follows (upwards): 1. slaves (nubi ); 2. benevolent, or good, people (shanren , or liangmin ), or common people (fanmin , minren ); 3. wise men (xianren ); 4. Saints (shengren ); 5. men of the Tao (daoren ); 6. Immortals (xianren ); 7. Real Men (zhenren ); 8. (major) Divine Men (shenren , or da shenren ); and 9. Divine Men of accumulated pneuma (weiqi shenren ). The Hanshu (92 ad), edited by Ban Gu (3292 ad), describes a similar ninefold human classification stretching from down to by combining two threefold classifications (shang , zhong , and xia ); a table names four of these nine grades as saints (shengren , ranked ), humane people (renren , ranked ), sages (zhiren , ranked ), and ignoramuses (yuren , ranked ), while the five remaining grades are left unnamed; see Hanshu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962) 20, pp. 86163. Compare also with the system of nine grades of official rank (jiupin ) which, according to Donald Holzman, Les dbuts du systme mdival de choix et de classement des fonctionnaires: Les Neuf Catgories et lImpartial et Juste , in Mlanges publis par lInstitut des Hautes tudes Chinoises (Paris: PUF, 1957) 1, p. 395, n. 2, may actually have been put to practice for nearly three centuries, between the Han and Tang dynasties. 43 Beiji zigong . The designation Purple palace, typical of Han times astronomical nomenclature, refers to the circumpolar region of the sky, which came to be called the ziwei yuan from the Jin dynasty onwards (see saki, Chgoku no seiza no rekishi , p. 29). Beiji zigong appears also in chap. 54 (sect. 3, j. 40; see T P JH J , p. 81), but ziwei seems foreign to T P J . 44 T P JC 4 , p. 15 b ( T P JH J , p. 222 ). This is the single occurrence, unfortunately unexplained, of the expression tian shang di in the T P JC as in the whole C T T 1101. All other occurrences of shangdi throughout the text probably refer to the Emperor of men here below. 40 42

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feature of Han beliefs, with its astro-calendrical cult to gods associated with stars. 45 Not only are circumpolar constellations a reflection of the prominent figures of the Imperial Court as the astral nomenclature implies, but the entire administrative organization of Heaven is modeled on the human world. For instance, chapter 199 describes its postal network in the following way, obviously drawing inspiration from actual regulations presiding over imperial mail: Postal relay stations 46 in Heaven have their own registers with instructions ( buling ). Those who ought not to stop (at postal relay stations), let them not stop. This is a case of not permitting carelessness with regard to the Heavenly Lords constant instructions, for fear that clerks responsible for the delivery (of official documents) use the prestige of their position abusively. There are high and low officials, and it is not permitted to claim a high position by force or deceit for the purpose of claiming a long stop. Postal relay station clerks 47 always take orders from the Heavenly Lord, and whenever (divine officials) pass through postal relay stations, they submit their name and the administrative position they come under. Concealed fraud is not possible. 48 From Han first-hand official records (in which postal relay stations are referred to as zhuanshe , as in our text, above), it is possible to infer some of the analogous rules that presided over the proper handling of imperial documents in the Han empire, as well as some of the penalties provided for in case of late or inaccurate delivery. 49 Such archeologi45 Notably to Taiyi (also written , or ), name of a star close to the Left Pivot, Zuoshu ( Dra), and which may have been regarded as polar (if then observable) around 2500 bc . See de Saussure, Les Origines de LAstronomie chinoise, pp. 521 23 ; saki, Chgoku no seiza no rekishi , pp. 16768. 46 I use the translation from Charles Oscar Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford U.P., 1985; hereafter cited as Hucker ), p. 186, no. 1487, according to which zhuanshe is a Han variant for youting (see n. 50, below). 47 Zhuanshe li , emending Wang Mings punctuation accordingly, as suggested by Donald Harper (private correspondence). 48 T P JH J , p. 614 . 49 For a concrete example of mail delivery, see Dunhuang Han slip 1291 , in Gansu sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo , ed., Dunhuang Han jian (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1991) 1, pl. 115; the most complete transcription is to be found in Zhongguo jiandu jicheng bianji weiyuanhui , ed., Zhongguo jiandu jicheng , biaozhu ben ( Lanzhou: Dunhuang wenyi chubanshe , 2001) 4, p. 19. For an occurrence of zhuanshe , see slip 1304 (Dunhuang Han jian , pl. 117; transcription in Zhongguo jiandu jicheng , p. 21). For various delivery rules and penalties, see Er nian l ling , slips 26476 (dated 186 bc), from Zhangjiashan , Hubei, tomb no. 247, in Zhangjiashan ersiqi hao Han mu zhujian zhengli xiaozu , ed., Zhangjiashan Han mu zhujian , ersiqi hao mu (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 2001), pl. 2930; transcriptions, pp. 16971.

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cal material provides us with an extra illustration of the way the divine sphere was modeled on human society and, further, strengthen our conviction that the ideas and beliefs expressed throughout the Taiping jing date back to the early-imperial era. This anthropomorphic modeling of the divine world also shows through parallel sentences in Taiping jing chao that boldly state that there are official residences and postal relay stations in Heaven, as on Earth 50 in the central part of the surface of the Earth as well as in the eight outlying regions. 51 Such an administrative circuit converges on the astronomically significant Hall of Brightness which, at least in Taiping jing non-A-material, stands as the central administrative organ under the jurisdiction of the Major god where all documents submitted by the divine officers are gathered to be collated then transmitted to the Heavenly Lord, who issues orders in response. 52 A stanza from Taiping jing shengjun mizhi , in which adepts of meditation are warned that in case of severe internal disorder, frightened bodily gods will leave their host to report to the Hall of Brightness, thus causing the death of the material body, 53 matches this concept of the Hall as a divine, central administrative organ to be compared with an earthly version of the Hall, especially designed to ensure a favorable circulation of seasonal pneuma and to collect extraordinary compositions from all parts of the world, some practical rules for the actual construction of which are still to be found in a fragment of Taiping jing chao . 54 Towards the
50 Though not appearing in Hucker , guanshe is common to Chinese historical sources as early as Hanshu ; e.g., Hanshu 66, p. 2886, where guanshe is the definition provided for guan , i.e. an official residence. Youting is also a Han term; see Hucker , p. 587, no. 8085. 51 T P JC 8 , pp. 17 b 18 a ( T P JH J , p. 698 ). The passage goes on to parallel the official residences of four planes: Heaven, Earth, the underground , and the space between Heaven and Earth (an interesting four-fold, vertical structure somewhat alien to the usual Heaven-Earth-Central Harmony/Man three-fold pattern of T P J , where there are said to reside respectively divine immortals , saints and wise men , benevolent gods and manes of Great Yin , and human immortals of refined spirits who still have not been able to ascend to Heaven and dwell between the Kunlun and the North Pole, among clouds and winds ( T P JH J , p. 698). We see, below, that the underground refers to the realm of the dead. 52 On collating, a key concept of T P J s epistemological agenda, see Espesset, Revelation, pp. 8385. On the administrative work in the Hall of Brightness, see chaps. 180 (T P JH J , p. 544), 186 (T P JH J , pp. 56870) (where it is called taiyang mingtang ; p. 568), and 199 (T P JH J , p. 614) of T P J , and the long passage of T P JC dealing with the administrative routine of Heaven (T P JC 9, pp. 11b14a; T P JH J , pp. 7102). Astronomically, the Hall formerly was the central star ( Sco) of the 3-star Xin (Heart) Mansion, later on a full 3-star constellation ( Leo, Leo, 87e Leo). See saki, Chgoku no seiza no rekishi , pp. 304, 311. For further astronomical and physiological correspondences, see T P J chap. 193 (T P JH J , p. 596). 53 See Taiping jing shengjun mizhi , p. 6 b ( T P JH J , p. 742 ), a passage to be emended following Yu Liming , ed., Taiping jing zhengdu ( Chengdu: Ba Shu shushe, 2001), p. 563. 54 T P JC 5 , p. 8 b ( T P JH J , p. 304 ).

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same period as that of the emergence of Taiping jing , the Xianger commentary to Laozis Daode jing also alludes, in the context of human subtle physiology and the preservation of vital principles, to the Hall of Brightness (seemingly referring to the organ heart), as well as unspecified heavenly bureaus and anonymous officials of life and death . 55 From its name, we may assume that the Bureau of Calculation (Jicao ) deals with general accounting in the divine realm, as suggested by a passage from Taiping jing chao alluding to the use of calculation chips by this offices divine civil servants to perform arithmetical tasks which, notably, relate to sums of money and precious things. 56 The same passage goes on to explain that all divine administrative calculations are to be centralized at the Bureau and submitted to a director of agriculture who, on a daily basis, transmits in turn this bulk of collected material to the Major god in the Hall of Brightness. 57 From fleeting allusions in chapters chapters 188 and 195 (sect. 7 , j . 114 ), we grasp that the functions of the director of agriculture involve the supply of both food through an institution called the Heavenly Granaries ( tiancang ), with an astronomical counterpart and garments to all divine civil servants who prove efficient, 58 and to the newly ascended members of the moral elite. 59 We also infer that this director of agriculture and another bureaucrat, the official in charge of sacrifices, 60 are two key links in the transmission chain
55 Laozi dao jing, shang, xianger (undated; London: The British Library, MS Stein 6825). I refer to the transcription of the MS provided in Rao Zongyi , Laozi Xianger zhu jiaojian (Hong Kong: Tong Nam Printers & Publishers, 1956), pp. 651. The Hall of Brightness, heavenly bureaus and officials of life and death appear on p. 29. For the physiological value of mingtang in the Xianger commentary, see Raos own commentary on p. 80. On the Xianger commentary, see also Li Fengmao , Laozi Xianger zhu de xingcheng ji qi daojiao sixiang , Dongfang zongjiao yanjiu ns 1 (1990), pp. 14980. 56 T P JC 9 , p. 12 a ( T P JH J , p. 710 ). 57 T P JH J , p. 710 . Chap. 179 seems to indicate ( T P JH J , p. 534 ) that the reason for centralizing their work was to check it. This director of agriculture was s inong , my literal translation; cf. Hucker , p. 453, no. 5729. We will see that the divine sinong matches his earthly equivalents, usually in charge of the National Treasury with varying responsibilities throughout historical periods. See also n. 62, below. 58 T P JH J , p. 579 . Mention of the granaries ( tiancang ) is the single occurrence of this compound in both T P J and T P JC . On the cang institution, see Hucker , p. 519, no. 6899; also p. 471, no. 6042, which says they were state grain supplies in Han times, under the jurisdiction of the da sinong (for which sinong was a common variant). Its astronomic correlation is a six-star constellation ( Cet, Cet, Cet, Cet, Cet, 57 Cet); saki, Chgoku no seiza no rekishi , p. 326. 59 T P JH J , p. 601 . 60 Ciguan ( 5 occurrences). I use the translation in Petersen, Taiping Jing and Clepsydra Reform, p. 142, which cites Fan Yes (398445) Hou Han shu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1965) 10A, p. 422, to say it was the title of an official employed in the local state cults . . . that was abolished in [105 ad]. Petersen uses the occurrence of this title to support his theory that C-material from the extant T P J was composed between 102 and 105 ad (ibid.).

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of the periodical reports of the offenses of men to the subterranean instances, as we shall see. 61 But here, the director of agriculture alluded to may be interpreted as belonging to the officialdom of the divine realm as much as that of the empire below, as elsewhere in the same chapter 188 . 62 The same may probably be said of the official in charge of sacrifices, at least in chapter 196 (sect. 7 , j . 114 ), which expounds the proper funerary attitude to observe as long as the coffin has not been buried. 63 But the reader may assume to be back to the divine sphere in chapter 203 (sect. 7 , j . 114 ), where one reads that when the spirits ( shenling ) are pleased by the way filial children perform the ancestral cult, they inform the civil officers in the departments of the director of fate and the official in charge of sacrifices above. 64 With the director of fate, we meet perhaps the so-called god of death of early Chinese culture sought after by some Western sinologists. 65 But, once again, we are given scarce information, especially in non-A-material: 66 an isolated, brief statement from a non-dialogue passage in Taiping jing chao confirms the central role played by the director of fate in the transmission of administrative documents up to the Heavenly Lord. 67 It is also worth emphasizing that, like most of his colleagues, the director of fate was granted stardom (so to speak) by Chinese astronomers. 68
Hucker, who omitted ciguan , provided an entry for cisi (Sacrificer), also a Han term, which appears once in chap. 196 of T P J (T P JH J , p. 605) and once in a T P J quotation from a Tang source, Zhu Famans (died 720) Yaoxiu keyi jiel chao (ZD , fasc. 204207; C T T 463), j. 14, p. 1b (T P JH J , p. 216). See Hucker , p. 559, no. 7570. 61 T P JH J , p. 579 . 62 The sinong mentioned in the following context is obviously a human official: in a state that is empty, no grain is stored in the granary, meat is scarce, no money is stored, year after year it gets worse, there is nothing to give to the court (T P JH J , p. 575). 63 T P JH J , p. 605 . 64 T P JH J , p. 626 . 65 On the siming , see Eduard Erkes, The God of Death in Ancient China, T P 35 ( 1940 ), pp. 185210 (p. 186 for the expression god of death). 66 By way of comparison, occurrences of siming in A-material are more numerous, the expression being often used in a rhetorical manner, as in chap. 137 (sect. 6, j. 93), in which the master states that Man is the divine director of fate (siming shen ) of the six domestic animals, because their life and death depend solely on him ( T P JH J , p. 383); a similar use is to be found in T P JC 8, p. 19b, which also tells of the power of local governmental representatives and the awe they inspired: the superior clerks are the director of fate of the people (T P JH J , p. 699; on zhangli , see Hucker , p. 110, no. 153). Also in T P JC 6, p. 9b, northwest is said to be the director of fate of earth because it is the sector where Yin peaks ( T P JH J , p. 466). Perhaps more interesting for our main concern is the following occurrence from a typical A-stratum dialogue on longevity in chap. 41 (sect. 3, j. 35), in which the master allusively tells one of the disciples: the director of fate will modify your records (T P JH J , p. 34). Obviously, the master needs not dwell on the topic to be understood by the disciple. 67 T P JC 4 , p. 7 b ( T P JH J , p. 214 ). 68 The fifth star ( 15 f UMa) of the Wenchang constellation; saki, Chgoku no seiza no rekishi , p. 301.

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The management of the human lifespan devolves on a Bureau of Longevity (Shoucao ), also called Bureau of Extended Longevity (Changshou zhi cao ). 69 This department archives data relating to men who, mainly owing to their moral conduct, are promised a longer life: as we learn from chapters 195 (sect. 7 , j . 114 ) and 203 , a special file from the dossier of men of high moral value who will be granted extra lifetime, called their fate record , is transferred ( or ) to the Bureau. 70 Here also are recorded the date (including hour) of the ascension of those who are destined for ultimate deification before their birth 71 this is why the Bureaus primary concern, according to chapter 199 , is life itself . 72 We may logically assume that these fate records ( mingji ) were originally managed by another administrative organ mentioned in chapter 179 (sect. 7 , j . 110 ), the Bureau of Fate (Mingcao ), also in charge of the final verification of the case of moral culprits, as we shall see. From chapter 182 (sect. 7 , j . 111 ), we grasp that this bureau receives orders directly from the Heavenly Lord himself. 73 Finally, the specific administrative handling of human deeds is certainly dealt with by two mirror-organs, the Bureau of Benevolence (Shancao ) and the Bureau of Malevolence (Ecao ), jointly referred to in chapter 182 (a single occurrence each). 74 These bureaus bring us to the sanction of Mans conduct by celestial authorities and its eventual consequences.
ETHICAL BEHAVIOR

Like their Christian counterparts, men of ancient China basically enjoy free will, as stated in chapter 199 (sect. 7 , j . 114 ): Each man has a will, has his own thoughts, has his own achievements; his plans are not identical (to those of others); each one has
69 On cao (Bureau), see Hucker , p. 520 , no. 6916 . Shoucao occurs in chaps. 180 ( T P JH J , p. 546) and 182 (T P JH J , pp. 549; 551); changshou zhi cao in chaps. 179 (T P JH J , pp. 531; 534), 195 (T P JH J , p. 602), and 203 (T P JH J , p. 625). 70 See chaps. 195 : only (those) who are able to meditate on the running of the affairs of Heaven, to get the essential words of heavenly gods and put their precepts to practice, and whose behavior arouses meditation, may have their fate record altered and transmitted to the Bureau of Extended Longevity (T P JH J , p. 602); 203 (T P JH J , p. 625); and 179 (T P JH J , p. 534). 71 See chap. 179 ( T P JH J , p. 531 ; Saints of High Antiquity is the ideal human profile referred to here) and further (T P JH J , p. 532; referring to men who obtained the Tao in High Antiquity). A similar statement is to be found in T P JC 9, p. 11b (T P JH J , p. 710). 72 The rest is a matter of self-calculations ( T P JH J , p. 613 ). That is to say, Heaven has control over human life (i.e. life duration and fate after death, as we shall see) but all other human affairs depend on men themselves. 73 T P JH J , p. 552 . 74 T P JH J , p. 552 .

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his own way of seeing things, his own productions, his own aspirations, and knows what his own mind is able to understand. 75 On this basis, the extant Taiping jing material does not develop a theory of secular law but rather variously alludes to taboos , prohibitions and proscriptions ( , and ), especially in Taiping jing A-material. 76 Concerning non-A-material, chapter 179 emphasizes that people should not dare to infringe the taboos and prohibitions of the Tao and have high regard for proscriptions (as men of High Antiquity did), 77 and that, although numerous, proscriptions and prohibitions may not be forgotten. 78 In chapter 203 , as in Taiping jing A-material, people who live without taboos are denounced. 79 And chapter 203 clearly states that the primary characteristic of benevolent conduct consists in not transgressing the proscriptions of Heaven and Earth, the four seasons, the five agents, the sun and moon, the stars, and all the gods. 80 What are these dreadful guidelines for proper moral, political, and cosmic behavior? Turning to A-text chapter 211 (sect. 7 , j . 118 ), for instance, we read that to delight in killing, hunting and fishing (acts contrary to the Heavenly Tao and benevolence) constitutes an offense. 81 Dialogue-style (but not strictly Taiping jing A-material) chapter 108 (sect. 5 , j . 71 ) mentions, as another example of proscription, to keep the mouth closed so that (gods of the body) will not disperse. 82 We owe to
T P JH J , p. 613; reading neng for nai , a common usage throughout T P J . Disciples often admit to a fear that their answers or questions will infringe (, also ) the taboos of the master; see chaps. 53 (T P JH J , p. 78), 60 (T P JH J , p. 104), 61 (T P JH J , pp. 112; 124), 62 (sect. 3, j. 46; T P JH J , p. 129), and 209 (sect. 7, j. 118; T P JH J , p. 668). This is why they want to learn what the gods of Heaven and Earth constantly regard as great taboos (chap. 61; T P JH J , p. 112). Further on in the same chapter, the master tells them that it is Heaven who makes them ask their questions, because Heaven fears that, among ignorant people, offending (fan ) the taboos of Heaven and Earth may never stop (T P JH J , p. 125), preventing the advent of Great Peace itself. (See also chap. 211; T P JH J , p. 672.) Among several other defects, men of later generations are said to have no taboo, chap. 103 (sect. 4, j. 6); T P JH J , p. 245. According to chap. 127, old people who are getting close to the end of their life do not have taboos any more (T P JH J , p. 327), and chap. 154 blames ignoramuses for not following the Tao or respecting any taboos, thus offending Heaven and Earth ( T P JH J , p. 434). 77 High antiquity was a prestigious, archetypal embodiment of superior moral qualities. In T P J , history goes through three declining ages (sangu ): a golden age of High Antiquity (shanggu ); Middle Antiquity (zhonggu ), an age of decline; and Low Antiquity (xiagu ), an age of disorder. Some passages of the text suggest that Low Antiquity is the period contemporaneous with the author(s) of T P J , or with the master from A-material chapters. Combined with the four declining governmental principles of Sovereignty , Emperorship , Kingship , and Hegemony , the sangu scheme also serves the purpose of duodecimal taxonomy, e.g. in chap. 103 (sect. 4, j. 66). 78 T P JH J , pp. 525 ; 528 ; 529 ; 537 . The same chapter also alludes to current prohibitions (T P JH J , pp. 533; 539). 79 T P JH J , p. 625 . 80 T P JH J , p. 625 . 81 T P JH J , p. 672 . 82 T P JH J , p. 286 .
75 76

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Max Kaltenmark a good overview of the way the spiritual advisers who produced the Taiping jing expected their followers to behave as regards such issues as filial piety, the killing of newborn girls, the proper way men and women should couple, the respectful attitude mortals should have towards Earth, and so on. 83 Such guidelines suggest to the modern reader several domains of deviance (regarding behavior, belief, privacy, sexuality) and their corresponding sociopathic types: the individualist, who keeps Tao and Virtue for personal benefit; the miser, who hoards up the cosmic heritage of humanity; the libertine, who turns away from the teachings of the Tao; the parasite, voluntarily unemployed; the anarchist, who disregards hierarchy and the rules of precedence; the continent, who refrains from procreating; the heretic indulging in shameful practices; the alcoholic (drinking alcohol strengthens agent Water to the detriment of agent Fire); the beggar; the evildoer; the infanticide. This colorful crowd, which lumps together nonconformists, freethinkers, potential delinquents, and criminals, also circumscribes by default the narrow path of normality leading to social acceptance, on the side of which watchful mentors, keepers of orthodoxy, are on the lookout for any trespassers. The ethical creation of normality takes shape on the vague borders of social alienation and legal sanction, in early imperial China as elsewhere. 84 Concerning Earth proscriptions, the extant chapter 61 (sect. 3 , j . 45 ) (also A-stratum) may have inherited fragments of five chapters of juan 154 from non-extant section 10 ( gui bu ), as indicated on MS S. 4226 , 85 for its content strikingly matches four of their titles precisely: 1 . Prohibitions on offending the soil , title of chapter 319 (sect. 10 , j. 154 ); 2 . To take (no more than) three feet of soil , chapter 321 (sect. 10 , j. 154 ); 3 . To order the soil (i.e. construct) brings men disease , chapter 322 (sect. 10 , j. 154 ); and 4 . The soil may no longer be offended , chapter 323 (sect. 10 , j. 154 ). The chapter itself, which compares Earth with a nourishing mother and Heaven with a father, provider of life, urges men to venerate Earth instead of hurting her with great construction and earthSee Kaltenmark, Ideology of the Tai-ping ching , pp. 3338. For 17th-c. and 18th-c. western Europe, see Michel Foucault, Histoire de la folie lge classique (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), pp. 17678. 85 MS S. 4226 , col. 265 66 .
83 84

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works , or excavations , which reach down to the Yellow Springs ; all these are not minor faults . 86 Further on, the master explains that laying out the ground inflicts Earth skin disease ( chuangyang ); that increasing the number of wells is like cutting Earths veins ( xuemai ) open, for water is Earths blood; that canals obstruct the circulation of the pure pneuma of Great Harmony ; and, once again, that excavating Earth reaches down to the Yellow Springs. 87 Soil-related prohibitions and taboos were undoubtedly common in Han times. 88 For instance, the chapter Jiechu pian (On Exorcism) by Wang Chong ( 27 ca. 100 ) in his Lunheng contains the statement that common people, whenever carrying out earthworks, have to perform jietu , a disyllabic compound glossed as to appease and ask the soil gods for forgiveness , an expression possibly implying both exorcist and thanksgiving rituals. 89 Hou Han shu also alludes to soil proscriptions , unfortunately without further information. 90 Such taboos may be either of heavenly or chthonian origin, 91 but the task to propagate them among people devolves on divine men ( shenren ), a category that we may safely assume to include the master
86 T P JH J , pp. 114 15 , a passage abstracted in T P JC 3 , p. 11 a ( T P JH J , pp. 115 16 ). On the Yellow Springs, see below. 87 T P JH J , p. 118 19 . 88 For some prohibitions and taboos related to construction and the soil in Han times, see Chang In-Sung , Zhongguo gudai jinji ( Taibei: Daoxiang chubanshe , 2000), pp. 5359; 8796. 89 See D. C. Lau, ed., A Concordance to the Lunheng/Lunheng zhuzi suoyin (Hong Kong: The Commercial Press Ltd., 1996), 75/321/7; Alfred Forke, trans., Lun-Hng : Philosophical Essays of Wang Chung (1907; rpt. New York: Paragon Book Gallery, 1962) 1, p. 535, has appeasing the earth. See also Rolf A. Stein, Religious Taoism and Popular Religion from the Second to Seventh Centuries, in Holmes Welch and Anna Seidel, eds., Facets of Taoism: Essays in Chinese Religion (New Haven : Yale U.P., 1979), p. 74; Peter Nickerson, The Great Petition for Sepulchral Plaints, in Stephen Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures (Berkeley: U. California P., 1997), pp. 24244; and Nickerson, Taoism, Death, and Bureaucracy, pp. 11217. 90 Hou Han shu 15 , p. 591 . In his own commentary, Li Xian ( 654 84 ) also mentions jietu (Hou Han shu 41, p. 1411). Six-Dynasties sources mentioning proscriptions related to the ground appear in Taiping yulan , edited by Li Fang (925995) in 982 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1960) 267, p. 1378a; 735, p. 3259a. For 9th and 10th cc., the importance of ground-related proscriptions in calendars from Dunhuang was recently noted by Alain Arrault; see Arrault and Jean-Claude Martzloff, Calendriers, in Marc Kalinowski, ed., Divination et socit dans la Chine mdivale: tude des manuscrits de Dunhuang de la Bibliothque nationale de France et de la British Library (Paris: Bibliothque nationale de France, 2003), pp. 1067 and 11417 (graph, p. 117). Present-day Chinese almanacs still include several daily prescriptions (, right, proper, or , prohibited, taboo) related to construction and the ground, with categories involving such activities as the beginning of construction work (literally to stir the soil , or to break the soil ), the building of foundations , the drilling of wells , etc. 91 For allusions to the heavenly origin of some prohibitions, see chaps. 184 ( T P JH J , p. 560 ),

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( shi ), or Heavenly Master ( tianshi ), of A-stratum. 92 Not surprisingly, the ideal medium to bring these guidelines to the attention of mortals is writing. 93 Chapter 199 argues that all common people in this world, even uncultivated, own written documents on proscriptions and taboos, and that the texts relating to admonitions, which cover more than one scroll, should be taken great care of. As we have seen, special gods produce memoranda to report mens evil deeds, the names of the culprits are entered on divine registers and the Heavenly Lord, being informed, will reduce the life span of culprits accordingly, possibly down to death. This is why the wise men who respect the proscriptions should bring out such written documents and get the common people to know them, warning them that not following their content will prevent them from fulfilling their life mandate and that their records of evil deeds will accumulate day after day and seldom decrease hence the necessary lethal consequences of the infringement ( fan ) of the admonitions revealed by such documents. 94 In chapter 108 , the death penalty is explicitly promised those who infringe prohibitions . 95
HUMAN LIFE SPAN AND THE REGISTRATION OF MORTALS

The clinching argument of the authors of the Taiping jing is simply that of the death threat coming from above. Indeed, if life is a recurring theme throughout the text, so is its fragility. We read, for instance, that though the mandate of longevity is impermanent, 96 some individuals do not value their mandate (of life) and believe that once dead, it is possible to live again (chapter 195 ), 97 while, indeed, natural longevity is hard to get and, once lost, it cannot be restored (chapter 179 ).98 You only live once. On that major concern, we are offered, in chapter 188 , the following unparalleled allegory possibly a later reflection of early Chinese cosmological concepts of cosmic trees: 99
190 (T P JH J , p. 582), and 212, where the master urges the disciples to bring out these proscriptions from Heaven above and not to conceal (them) ( T P JH J , p. 668). For allusions to the proscriptions promulgated by chthonian entities, see chap. 186 (T P JH J , p. 567). 92 T P JH J , p. 565 . 93 See chap. 199 ( T P JH J , p. 614 ); also Espesset, Revelation, pp. 78 82 . 94 T P JH J , p. 614 15 , for these passages on written documents of common people and their rules. 95 T P JH J , p. 288 . On the legalistic value of zhu , see A. F. P. Hulsew, Remnants of Han Law , Vol. 1 : Introductory Studies and an Annotated Translation of Chapters 22 and 23 of the History of the Former Han Dynasty (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1955), pp. 109, 121 (to execute). 96 T P JH J , p. 600 . 97 T P JH J , p. 601 . 98 T P JH J , p. 529 . 99 For various sets of four, or five, cosmic trees, see Hwang, Ming-tang , pp. 328402.

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Each man has one tree of fate growing in the soil of Heaven: a mulberry tree 100 for those born during the three months of spring, a jujube or plum tree ( zaoli )for those born during the three months of summer, a catalpa or geng tree 101 for those born during the three months of autumn, and a locust tree or cypress ( huai bai ) for those born during the three months of winter. 102 These are what ordinary people ( suren ) depend on. All (these trees) are supervised by officials in charge of trees. When the end of ones mandate (of life) is getting near, his or her tree is half alive; when the mandate is exhausted, the tree withers and its leaves fall, and the official in charge fells it. 103 Under such conditions, no wonder that one of the disciples concludes a lesson (in A-material chapter 178 [sect. 7 , j . 109] ) by declaring, to the satisfaction of the master, that he will never dare to infringe ( fan ) any proscription. 104 The effective duration of the life span depends on moral conduct, as chapter 203 explains: good deeds attract life and evil deeds bring precocious death, and this is why the texts of benevolent men should be shown to the living so as to have them understand longevity and what provokes the auspicious and the inauspicious . 105 Not only will the benevolent fulfill their mandate of years while the malevolent suffer life span abridgment, but repeated malevolence will bring disaster upon the unborn (that is, descendants) who will be ill-fated and will not bring their count (on which, see below) to its end that is, will die an untimely death. 106 This pertains
100 Chap. 181 also alludes to the soil of Heaven and the soil of Earth , which grow their own plants and produce their own worthy individuals (T P JH J , p. 547; a passage to emend after Yu, ed., Taiping jing zhengdu , p. 405). On the symbolism of the mulberry tree in early Chinese mythology, see Sarah Allan, The Shape of the Turtle: Myth, Art, and Cosmos in Early China (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1991), pp. 2758. 101 The jujube and plum trees belong to the same botanical family. I am unable to find a common Western equivalent for the geng tree. 102 Huainan zi 5 (Shize xun [Treatise on Seasonal Rules]), which belongs to the Monthly Ordinances (Yueling )genre, expounds a twelvefold association of trees with months, but the seasonal correspondences are different from those in T P J : the plum (li ) is related to the third month, i.e. the last month of spring; the catalpa ( zi ) to the sixth month, i.e. the last month of summer; the locust ( huai ) to the ninth month, i.e. the last month of autumn; and the jujube tree (zao ) is related to the eleventh month, i.e. the middle month of winter. The mulberry (sang ), geng , and cypress (bai ) trees of T P J do not appear in this nomenclature (see Lau, ed., A Concordance to the Huainanzi , pp. 3947). A complete translation of Huainan zi 5 appears in John S. Major (with an appendix by Christopher Cullen), Heaven and Earth in Early Han Thought: Chapters Three, Four, and Five of the Huainanzi (Albany: State U. of New York P., 1993), pp. 22468. Major provides a useful table of the general twelvefold correlates of the passage, including English translations of names of the trees; li is rendered as Pear, zi as Hazel, huai as Sophora, and zao as Jujube (ibid., p. 222). 103 T P JH J , p. 578 . 104 T P JH J , p. 522 . 105 T P JH J , p. 625 . 106 Chap. 181 (T P JH J , p. 549). For a similar statement, see also chap. 196 (T P JH J , p. 604).

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to the same logic as the theory of inherited burden developed elsewhere in Taiping jing and seemingly proper to this text, which sees present human suffering and cosmic disasters as the consequence of the accumulation of evil deeds by ancestors and, although men of today are not responsible for its production, devolves on them the responsibility for dispelling it. 107 The documents that record individual human conduct are called records of good deeds and evil deeds , as chapter 179 explains. These records are fed by the reports emanating from gods sent by Heaven, gathered to be collated ( jujiao ) on a yearly, daily, and monthly basis. A certain number of years is then deducted from each individuals life span allotment accordingly. 108 But the computation of human life duration, its variations and, ultimately, its inevitable exhaustion, is performed by means of registers of fate , records of fate , or account books . 109 As a basic unit for measuring human life span allotment, officials of the divine administration use the count , also called longevity count , or heavenly count , initially granted to each mortal by Heaven. This numerical datum, which is subject to computation, 110 corresponds to the actual duration (perhaps in years) of ones life span, and the termination of life when ones count comes to its end is, as pictured in chapter 131 (sect. 6 , j . 90 ), as ineluctable as the sun setting at the end of the day after having risen at dawn. 111 Once ones count has been exhausted and physical death has occurred,
107 On the theory of chengfu , see Kamitsuka Yoshiko , Taiheiky no shfu to taihei no riron ni tsuite , Nagoya daigaku kyybu kiy , A-32 (1988), pp. 4175; rpt. idem, Rikuch Dky shis no kenky (Tokyo: Sbunsha, 1999), pp. 30137; Hendrischke, Inherited Evil, pp. 829; Xing Yitian , Taiping jing dui shane baoying de zai kending, chengfu shuo , Guowen tiandi 87.83 (1992), pp. 1216; Liu Zhaorui , Chengfu shuo yuanqi lun , Shijie zongjiao yanjiu 62.4 (1995), pp. 1007; Lin Huisheng , Chengfu yu lunhui, baoying lilun jianli de kaosuo , in Gong Pengcheng , ed., Haixia liangan Daojiao wenhua xueshu yantaohui lunwen (Taibei: Taiwan xuesheng , 1996), pp. 26393; and Strickmann, Chinese Magical Medicine , pp. 3944. On its relationship with the classical idea of retribution, see Yang Lien-sheng, The Concept of Pao as a Basis for Social Relations in China, in John K. Fairbank, ed., Chinese Thought and Institutions (Chicago: U. Chicago P., 1957), p. 299. Its specificity as regards the idea of retribution has aptly been pointed out in Xing, Taiping jing dui shane baoying, p. 16. 108 T P JH J , p. 526 . 109 E.g., chaps. 186 : mingbu ( T P JH J , p. 568 ); 188 , 197 , and 198 : buwen ( T P JH J , pp. 579 ; 607; 610); 195 and 203: mingji (T P JH J , pp. 602; 625). 110 Ji . See chaps. 181 ( T P JH J , p. 549 ) and 184 ( T P JH J , p. 562 ). On the idea of a count, e.g., T P J , chaps. 181: tiansuan (T P JH J , p. 549), and 182: shousuan (T P JH J , p. 552); and T P JC , j. 6, pp. 7ab: tiansuan (T P JH J , p. 464). Suan is also written twice, presumably without alteration in the meaning, in (A-text) chap. 41: tiansuan ; zeng suan (T P JH J , p. 34). 111 T P JH J , p. 341 .

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one will enter the subterranean realm of the dead. As we shall see, this ill-fated end contrasts with divine ascension, the prelude to which is the fulfillment of ones count , 112 that is, without suffering any year deletion penalty (chapter 184 [sect. 7 , j . 111] ). Though we may assume it to be initially set in accordance with calendrical computations, as suggested in chapter 181 (sect. 7 , j . 111 ) that expounds a method for determining human fate according to the date (day, month, and year) of birth, 113 ones count may in fact be decreased . The decreasing of ones life span is technically performed by deleting or subtracting count units, basically as a function of ones evil deeds. For instance, we read in chapter 211 that severe transgressions will entail indictment, and minor transgressions a decreasing of life span, performed by subtracting count units . 114 Chapter 185 (sect. 7 , j . 112 ) adds that a reduction of ones life span by Heaven (here rather to be understood as heavenly officials) may be accompanied by lasting suffering and sickness that doctors and shamans are unable to cure, for there is no doubt that the registers of these sick persons are already closed, in other words, their death has become inevitable. 115 Chapter 201 (sect. 7 , j . 114 ) also criticizes doctors and shamans, and religious specialists called shenjia (probably priests of various unofficial, or popular, cults), for only seeking money and invoking false gods of illness to cure credulous peoples ailments. All these specialists are incompetent as regards illness provoked by ones misconduct because ones name records are out of their reach. 116 However, in some cases, the shortening of life span may be directly inflicted by oneself on ones body, seemingly without regard for the count. For instance (chapter 183 ), Heaven abhors hidden knowledge and concealed talent , those valuable individuals who refuse to be promoted, an obvious allusion to recluse scholars. Not only will such individuals never enter the records of longevity , their essence will leave their body and be lost, spoiling their life span in turn. 117
112 T P JH J , p. 561 . On the count as exhausted, generally , see chaps. 179 ( T P JH J , p. 526), 186 (T P JH J , p. 568), and 187 (T P JH J , p. 572). 113 See Penny, System of Fate Calculation. 114 T P JH J , p. 672 . For similar instances, see also chaps. 178 , 179 , 186 , and 188 : chusuan jiannian ( T P JH J , pp. 522, 526, 579); duo rensuan (T P JH J , p. 543); chu suan (T P JH J , p. 568). 115 T P JH J , p. 566 . 116 T P JH J , p. 620 . On luji (registers) and mingji (name records), see also n. 137, below. 117 T P JH J , p. 558 .

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This account of human life span is not specific to Taiping jing . In Ge Hongs ( 283 343 ) Baopu zi neipian (ca. 320 ), we are told that in Heaven and Earth, there are gods who are in charge of transgressions and subtract (units) from mens count according to the gravity of their offenses. As ones count decreases, one becomes impoverished and sick, and repeatedly encounters hardship. When the count comes to exhaustion, one dies. Ge Hong proceeds to evoke the three corpses , who dwell in the human body, do their best to have their host die early, and on each gengshen day, ascend to Heaven to inform the director of fate of mens transgressions and faults. Moreover, each night of the last day of the lunar month, the God of the Stove also ascends to Heaven to report mens sins. Major ones entail the subtraction of one ji , that is, 300 days; minor ones entail the subtraction of one suan , three days. Ge admits having been unable to appreciate the reality of this matter. 118 Interestingly, Ge, though mentioning a Scripture of Great Peace in fifty juan ( Taiping jing wu shi juan ) in his inventory of his masters library (chapter 19 ), 119 draws here on other sources. The third juan of the Six Dynasties or early-Tang demonography Nqing guil deals with the lifespan penalties incurred for behaving improperly and offending the proscriptions of the statutes of the Tao . Twenty-two precepts of benevolence spoken by a Heavenly Master detail, with many repetitions, the number of count units Heaven will delete ( chu ) or subtract ( duo ), amounting from 13 units (Precept 2 ) to 30 , 000 (Precept 19 ), the arithmetical average penalty exceeding 2 , 500 units (but the value of one unit remains unspecified). 120 In Precept 9 , for instance, aimed at those who roam through the country to engage in sexual orgies, provoking perverse disorder which prevents the removal of calamities, deadly calamities hitting seven generations of descendants are added to an already severe deletion of 13 , 000 count-units. 121
118 Baopu zi neipian 6 , pp. 5 ab. See Wang Ming, ed., Baopu zi neipian jiaoshi (Taibei: Liren shuju, 1981; rpt. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1985), p. 125. This and similar passages from Ge Hong have been translated and analyzed in Robert F. Campany, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth: A Translation and Study of Ge Hongs Traditions of Divine Transcendents (Berkeley: U. California P., 2002), pp. 4852. 119 Wang, Baopu zi neipian jiaoshi , p. 333 . 120 See Nqing guil ( ZD , fasc. 553 ; C T T 790 ) 3 , pp. 1 a 3 b. On the problematic nature and dating of the text, see Lai Chi-tim, The Demon Statutes of Nqing and the Problem of the Bureaucratization of the Netherworld in Early Heavenly Master Daoism, T P 88.45 (2002), pp. 25181; pub. in Chinese as Nqing guil yu zaoqi Tianshi dao dixia shijie de guanliao hua wenti , in Lai Chi-tim , ed., Daojiao yanjiu yu Zhongguo zongjiao wenhua (Hong Kong: Zhonghua shuju, 2003), pp. 236. For a survey of its content, see Strickmann, Chinese Magical Medicine , pp. 8087. 121 Nqing guil 3 , p. 2 a.

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Finally, we may mention the late Northern Song ( 961127 ) moral guidebook Taishang ganying pian , still popular and still widely spread in Taoist as well as Buddhist temples today. It has perpetuated for centuries this belief in the otherworldly accounting of the human life span, in terms similar to those of the passage of Baopu zi just quoted. 122 In its opening sentence the ineluctability of the retribution for deeds is compared with the shadow following the body , 123 an analogy that is more than mere euphemism, considering the everlasting presence of divine warders inside every human body. 124 Hopefully, and contrary to both the Baopu zi and Nqing guil which do not mention that possibility, we read at several places in Taiping jing that ones count may be increased . 125 Taiping jing chao shows how this is done: every human life gets such a heavenly count that obeys constant laws, but, as many men cannot bring their count to its end (that is, their death occurs in an untimely manner), an incalculable quantity of unused heavenly counts piles up. This is why men of benevolence get their count increased: all (such mens counts) are increased by this residual count . 126 A similar statement is to be found in another fragment of Taiping jing chao , which obviously corresponds to the title of chapter 231 (sect. 8 , j . 130 ) in S. 4226 , 127 and adds that such a residual count of one year per count (-unit) is set aside in Heaven to be granted to the benevolent who behave just like the orators text instructs them to. 128 This is certainly what chapter 195 alludes to when it states that ones records of fate may be altered
122 On Taishang ganying pian , see Cynthia J. Brokaw, The Ledgers of Merit and Demerit: Social Change and Moral Order in Late Imperial China (Princeton: Princeton U.P., 1991), pp. 3643. 123 See Taishang ganying pian ( ZD , fasc. 834 39 ; C T T 1167 ) 1 , pp. 2 b and 4 a 19 b, with commentaries by Li Changling ( 9371008) and Zheng Qingzhi (11761252); English translations (without the commentaries) in James Legge, transl., The Texts of Taoism , vols. 3940 of Sacred Books of the East (London: Oxford U.P., 1891; rpt. New York: The Julian Press, 1959), pp. 67576; Paul Carus and Suzuki Teitaro, Tai-Shang Kan-Ying Pien: Treatise of the Exalted One on Response and Retribution (La Salle, Illinois: The Open Court Publishing Co., 1906), pp. 5152. On this text, see also Brokaw, Ledgers of Merit and Demerit , pp. 3643. 124 Also attested in chap. 188 of T P J : gods remain in the middle (of the body), watching mens good and evil deeds ( T P JH J , p. 577). 125 See T P J , chaps. 63 (sect. 3 , j. 47 ): zengshou yisuan ( T P JH J , p. 133 ; an expression simply rendered as zeng shou , to increase longevity, in the corresponding abridgment from T P JC 3, p. 13b), 103 (T P JH J , pp. 250; 252), and 129 (T P JH J , p. 334). Zeng suan also appear in T P JC 6, p. 7b (T P JH J , p. 464); 9, p. 16a (T P JH J , p. 713). 126 T P JC 6 , pp. 7 ab ( T P JH J , p. 464 ). 127 Xiang wen xing zeng suan , To behave just like the (masters) text (instructs) increases (ones) account (cols. 22122). 128 T P JC 8 , pp. 14 b 15 a ( T P JH J , p. 695 ). On the expression wu wen , see n. 163 , below. The term set aside is read ge (here to be understood as ge ) for ge , as suggested by an analogous passage from chap. 181 (T P JH J , p. 549).

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and transferred to the Bureau of Extended Longevity. 129 The residual count is unused life span, promised as extra lifetime allotment to those who comply with the moral guidelines of Great Peace, a gift of extra longevity which descendants of the benevolent will also enjoy (providing that they do not stray from the straight and narrow) for, as chapter 203 of Taiping jing claims in reference to a 120 -year great longevity , the residual count granted to their ancestors will equally affect their own life duration. 130 Interestingly, the Xianger commentary on Laozi, though not dwelling on the matter, also refers in passing to the idea of residual count . 131 Thus in what we may assume to reflect Chinese pre-Buddhist religious ideas, merit and guilt were seen as collective and hereditary, rather than individual and perpetually reactivated through a cycle of rebirth. But the accounting of life span is not the single purpose of the documents kept by divine officialdom in the Taiping jing . On the one hand, we learn from a passage of dialogue towards the end of chapter 182 , between the Heavenly Lord and the Major god, that ordinary people ( suren ) are originally not recorded but, providing they blame themselves for their mistakes and show superior benevolence, they may be noticed by divine instances and gain their place in Heavens registers. 132 This statement partly matches chapter 213 (sect. 7 , j . 119 ), which, after having discussed the three moral qualities which are also cosmic principles of Tao, Virtue ( de ), and humaneness ( ren ), 133 goes on to state that the three kinds of people who embody these qualities corresponding to Yang, Yin and central harmony respectively are entered on registers ( luji ) while those who do not behave like them are not, but then says no more on this topic. 134 And in chapter 184 , which deals with a special class of men whose family and personal names are already registered before their birth, we read that mortals who have been entered on registers ( luji ) will experience divine ascension. 135 On the other hand, chapter 181 informs the reader that each time a child is born, there is a sihou nearby (perhaps an official in charge of observations) who enters the event in a regisQuoted in n. 70, above. T P JH J , p. 625. See also chap. 189 (T P JH J , p. 580). 131 See Rao, Laozi Xianger , pp. 29 , 78 . 132 T P JH J , p. 551 . 133 One of the many characterizations of the triadic ideology of T P J ; see Grgoire Espesset, vau-leau, rebours ou lambivalence de la logique triadique dans lidologie du Taiping jing , CEA 14 (2004), pp. 9395. 134 T P JH J , p. 681. Yet it should be noticed that this chapter, though appearing in section 7 like juan 110, 111, 112 and 114 (all non-A-material), belongs, at least formally, to stratum A. 135 T P JH J , p. 561 .
129 130

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ter ( luji ) so that no one may be omitted. 136 From the context, it is not clear whether we are still dealing here with an otherworldly document kept by a divine official or with an actual parish register such as the diocesan registers of Six Dynasties Taoism, which were to be updated on the occasion of each one of the three yearly diocesan assemblies ( sanhui ), as expounded in the abridged codes assumed to derive from a work by Lu Xiujing ( 406477 ). 137 Other supernatural documents include the files in which appear the names of saints and sages who seek divine immortality, referred to in chapter 190 (sect. 7 , j . 112 ) by the conjunct expressions account registers and parish registers . 138 Chapter 190 mentions rolls of divine immortals in the Northern Pole (the center of the sky), which is connected with mount Kunlun , on the top of which are Real Men ( zhenren ), who regularly ascend and descend, presiding over men whose family and personal names follow each other on the registers. 139 Thus we are facing a wide range of administrative documents, some more or less synonymous, some specifically designed for a technical purpose census, recording of human deeds, accounting of human life span, listing of immortals, etc. but collectively witnessing this close divine watch and registration which starts within mans own body, as we learned from chapter 195 . Among all these administrative documents, records of life and
136 T P JH J , p. 547 . On s ihou , see Hucker , p. 446 , no. 5628 , who renders it Chief of Attendants. Though such a title appears in historical sources as early as Hou Han shu 30B, p. 1065, Huckers entry relates to the Jin and Yuan dynasties only. According to Yu, Taiping jing zhengdu , pp. 6, 430, 431, and 460, most of the occurrences of this compound in T P J are verbal (to watch, to observe) rather than nominal (see T P JH J , pp. 580; 582; 622; 722). Chap. 188 provides one possibly nominal occurrence in the context of physiology ( T P JH J , p. 577) and chap. 190, in astronomic context (T P JH J , p. 581, where jiheng is a synecdoche for the Big Dipper). For official titles including the character hou with the nominal meaning of observer, see Hucker , pp. 22526, no. 2207, 2208, 2210, 2212, 2215, 2216, 2217, and 2221. 137 See Lu xiansheng daomen kele ( ZD , fasc. 761 ; C T T 1127 ), p. 2 a. These diocesan registers seem to be similar to the name records (mingji ) mentioned in the context of sanhui by another code, the taizhen ke , quoted in Zhu Famans Yaoxiu keyi jiel chao 11, p. 11a (I am indebted to Ian Chapman for drawing my attention to this material). Wang Mings edition of T P J contains 23 occurrences of the expression luji , 21 of which (more than 91%) appear in juan 110, 111, 112 and 114 of the T P J (all non-A material). In modern usage, luji still refers to ones place of birth, i.e. where one is registered, somewhat like the parish registers in the Christian West. 138 T P JH J , p. 584 . 139 T P JH J , p. 583 . On the beiji , see n. 16 , above. A passage of T P JC 9 , p. 11 b, seems to indicate that this roll of the divine immortals (shenxian lu ; T P JH J , p. 710; I emend Wangs punctuation here), contains the names of those who, before their birth, are already promised to divine ascension and deification. The roll of real, divine immortals, zhen shenxian lu (T P JH J , p. 565), which chap. 185 mentions in passing, likely refers to the same document.

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death should be of foremost concern to all mortals who care about their postmortem fate. 140 Chapter 195 states that there are life records ( shengji ) in Heaven which are desirable, and death records ( siji ) in Earth which are appalling. 141 And, according to chapter 188 , irrevocably not being recorded for long life is meant to be the most dreaded of all possible doomsday scenarios. 142 As usual, specific divine officials are in charge of these records: for instance, in chapter 183 , gods in charge of life records are ordered by the Heavenly Lord to check their registers and definitely fulfill the life span of men whose names appear on them, without omitting a single year or month. 143 The same chapter stated earlier that only those among mortals who are determined enough to meditate with all their strength and earn merit ( gong ) will have the text of their death records revoked and regain a short lifetime ;144 and chapter 196 , that life records may be obtained if one practices the writings (of Heaven, which men of Antiquity already knew) without any doubts , but if one has doubts and does not practice them, the day of his or her death will be fixed . 145 Of analogous nature are, probably, the records of non-dying , in which, according to chapter 182 , will first be registered men of uppermost benevolence (a human moral class defined by a dozen traits) when obtaining longevity, before finally entering the rolls of long life . 146 The crucial life or death alternative thus materializes as two antithetical groups of administrative documents which all mankind shares according to moral criteria. In chapter 179 , this binary alternative is expressed in the following way: the benevolent shall ascend , the malevolent shall suffer penal laws . 147 This is, of course, the well-known, classical binary opposition between reward and punishment in Chinese law, both being commonly regarded as response, or retribution . 148
140 See chaps. 155 (sect. 6 , j. 97 ): siji ( T P JH J , p. 436 ); 180 : siji zhi wen ( T P JH J , p. 546), sheng luji (T P JH J , p. 546); 182: shengji (T P JH J , p. 556); 183: shouji (T P JH J , p. 558), shengji (T P JH J , p. 559); and 196: shengji (T P JH J , p. 606). 141 T P JH J , p. 602 . 142 T P JH J , p. 576 . 143 T P JH J , p. 559 . Wang Mings punctuation in this passage is not satisfactory: the character shen should be read in connection with wei wei (a recurring formula expressing acquiescence, or agreement, in the T P J ) as, for instance, in the concluding sentence of the first paragraph of chap. 182: dashen weiwei (T P JH J , p 552). 144 T P JH J , p. 546 . 145 T P JH J , p. 606 . 146 T P JH J , p. 554 , and changshou zhi wen ( T P JH J , p. 532 ). See also chap. 192 , about men of filial piety ( xiao ): Heaven fixes their registers ( luji ) and has them placed among the non-dying (busi ) (T P JH J , pp. 59394). 147 T P JH J , p. 525 . Compare the following hierarchical and bureaucratic expression of that binary alternative from chap. 189: the mandate of life may be the subject of reports; the benevolent shall ascend (shang ), the malevolent shall recede (tui ) (T P JH J , p. 580; Wangs punctuation should be emended here as indicated in Yu, Taiping jing zhengdu , p. 429). 148 On Chinese Law, see Derk Bodde and Clarence Morris, Law in Imperial China: Ex-

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ASCENSION AND DEIFICATION

The ultimate event in the mortal life of a man belonging to the moral elite is ascension to Heaven in broad daylight , 149 the fate which was experienced by Zhang Daoling himself, the patron saint of the earliest Taoist church, according to Taoist hagiography. 150 This extremely rare outcome involves less than one out of one million people those who manage to perform deliverance from the corpse amounting to one out of one million precisely. 151 As we already have learned from chapter 180 , the names of the chosen ones who will take part in the government of Heaven appear in the Heavenly Lords personal register. 152 Such men, according to chapter 193 (sect. 7 , j . 114 ), are said to have a natural aptitude for benevolence, a heart naturally luminous, a will which is not perverted by heresy, disregard for what relates to material profit, crude clothing hardly covering their body, and do not covet the great ventures and wealth of the mundane world. 153 Nonetheless, men who eat dung and drink urine will never be granted such a blissful fate. 154 The third paragraph of chapter 179 is concerned with the physical
emplified by 190 Ching Dynasty Cases (Translated from the Hsing-an hui-lan): With Historical, Social, and Juridical Commentaries (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard U.P., 1967), pp. 351. On retribution, see Yang, Concept of Pao . Classically, the alternation of reward and punishment corresponds to the cycle of seasons spring and summer, autumn and winter respectively and thus partakes of general cosmological views. 149 An expression peculiar to juan 111 and 114 (five occurrences). Also shengtian , in chaps. 193 (T P JH J , p. 596) and 208 (sect. 7, j. 117; T P JH J , p. 661), or shengtian , in chap. 208 (T P JH J , p. 665); and T P JC 6, p. 18a (T P JH J , p. 467). On ascension in broad daylight as one in a hierarchy of religious achievements, see Campany, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth , pp. 7580. 150 See Camille Imbault-Huart, La Lgende du premier pape des Taostes et lhistoire de la famille pontificale des Tchang, J A 8.43 (1884), p. 436; Campany, To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth , pp. 34956; and Franciscus Verellen, The Twenty-four Dioceses and Zhang Daoling: The Spatio-Liturgical Organization of Early Heavenly Master Taoism, in Phyllis Granoff and Koichi Shinohara, eds., Pilgrims, Patrons, and Place: Localizing Sanctity in Asian Religions (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2003), p. 49. On the topic of divine ascension and deification, see also Y, Life and Immortality, pp. 87 ff; Stephen Bokenkamp, Death and Ascent in Ling-pao Taoism, Taoist Resources 1.2 (1989), pp. 120; and Michael J. Puett, To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard U.P., 2002). 151 The figures come from chap. 193 ( T P JH J , p. 596 ). A passage from chap. 182 , which explains in passing the meaning of shijie , confirms the superiority of divine ascension over immortality obtained through deliverance from the corpse ( T P JH J , p. 553). 152 T P JH J , p. 546 . See also chap. 197 , where men of improved benevolence ( jin shan ) promised to divine ascension are recorded inside registers, under (the heading) ascension to Heaven in broad daylight (T P JH J , p. 607). 153 T P JH J , p. 596 . 154 T P JH J , p. 661 . The third of four conducts which insult Heaven (chap. 208 ): no. 1 , not to show filial piety; no. 2, not to indulge in regular sexual intercourse nor to conceive offspring; and no. 4, begging (T P JH J , p. 655). Tang Yongtong , Han Wei liang Jin Nanbei

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preservation of the individual destined for ascension. The suppleness of his or her limbs and joints will be put to the test repeatedly and medicine will be administered to him or her, in order to keep his or her bones and joints (the whole body) fit. 155 For, according to a passage preserved in Taiping jing chao , the body of the ascended-to-be is to be transformed ( hua ), 156 that is, deified, as we shall soon see. Such instances bear witness to the combination of the classical belief in the pursuit of physical immortality with that of moral immortality achieved through benevolent deeds. The same passage of chapter 179 informs us that all the documents relating to the ascension should be submitted during the one hundred preceding days and that, should some document not match some other one, the Bureau of Calculation would interrupt the administrative procedure of ascension. Further, if the future divine official formerly had inherited burden (chengfu ), the Heavenly Lord will order gods to have it purely and simply blotted out . 157 Chapter 188 informs us that eventually, at the time for ascension, the gods who preside over registers as well as those who protect the individual will return and receive instructions from the heads of bureaus. 158 In chapter 198 (sect. 7 , j . 114 ), the administrative procedure of ascension of a man who has earned merit (gong) occasions the following scene: The Heavenly Lord says: Inform the civil officers of the bureaus and the appropriate subordinates not to wait any longer and to send gods to examine him 159 from above. The Bureau declares: Let emissaries be sent below, as the Heavenly Lord has instructed.
chao Fojiao shi ( Changsha: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1938; rpt. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1997), pp. 7380 (followed by Kaltenmark, The Ideology of the Tai-ping ching , p. 35) regarded these four categories as attacks against early Buddhist practices. Counter-arguments have been put forward by a Buddhist monk, according to whom they rather refer to practices of fangshi and hermits; see Ju Zan , Tang zhu Fojiao shi guanyu Taiping jing yu Fojiao de shangtui , Xiandai Foxue 6 (1962), pp. 136. See also Zhang Mantao , ed., Han Wei liang Jin Nanbei chao pian , vol. 1: Zhongguo Fojiao shi zhuanji zhi yi (Taibei: Dacheng wenhua , Xiandai Fojiao xueshu congkan , vol. 5, 1977), pp. 3014 (Tangs answer to Ju) and 3047 (Jus answer to Tangs). For a criticism of the whole argument as lacking historical grounds, see Yoshioka Yoshitoyo, Taiheiky to Bukky , in Kan Gi bunka kenkykai , ed., Uchino hakushi kanreki kinen, Tygaku ronsh (Tokyo: Kan Gi bunka kenkykai, 1964), pp. 89111; rpt. in Dky to Bukky (Tokyo: Kokusho kankkai, 1970) 2, pp. 13661, especially pp. 13639. 155 T P JH J , pp. 532 34 . 156 T P JC , j. 9 , p. 11 b ( T P JH J , p. 710 ). 157 T P JH J , p. 534. 158 T P JH J , p. 577 . 159 In the first, non-dialogue half of this chapter, minor gods have been found guilty of negligence in reporting the exceptional moral qualities of a mortal deserving to ascend to Heaven

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The Heavenly Lord commands the Bureau to also tell the Major god to examine this document 160 and to have it brought to the attention of all gods. The Bureau shows the document to the Major god (and), in the departments below, each (divine civil servant) lives up to his duty, seeing if there are (men of) merit and benevolence, (for) men who yearn for promotion must be promoted. All previous matters (relating to such men) are reported and made known. The Heavenly Lord commands the Major god, saying: As soon as you have observed such a man, check whether he corresponds to what the emissary gods have said or not. 161 Then the text provisionally returns to the issue of the negligence of minor gods who failed to report in time such a man of superior qualities, before going on with the procedure for the divine ascension of the chosen one: The envoy gods conduct the transformation of this individual and make him become a god, adorn him with a halo, 162 and proceed to the examination of the archives to have him ascend . If (this man) is not (archived), they note down his family and personal names, and send him above. The Major god, having received instructions, returns to the Bureau, examines if the family and personal names of this (man) appear in the registered files, tells the Bureau that such information 163 appears in the documents and asks permission to check the personal registers 164 of the Heavenly Lord to know whether they correspond to them or not. The Heavenly Lord takes out his documents and examines them (and, as) they are similar to the external documents , he decrees that it is proper (for the man) to ascend. The Major god says: I am not sure whether the life span (of this man) is already fulfilled or not. I ask permission to check this again. The Heavenly Lord exclaims: Major god, (you) have been appointed to a surveillance position, 165 but you have not examined him thor(the concrete penalty for such negligence will be described below). In shi zhi , the particle zhi refers to the man they failed to report. 160 Probably the written document bearing the orders formerly spoken by the Heavenly Lord. 161 T P JH J , p. 612 . 162 Zeng qi jingguang , literally: increase his refined radiance. 163 Ci wen , literally: this text (used alternately with , these writings or this book), here to be distinguished from similar occurrences in A-material referring to the (undefined) masters own text or writings also referred to as ( my text) and (my writings) in the masters sermons; see Espesset, Revelation, pp. 8893. 164 Literally: inner registers, on which see n. 23 , above. 165 Ermu , literally: ears and eyes, which should be interpreted in the light of Hucker , p. 510, no. 6721.

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oughly and you say that (you want to) check again? The Major god apologizes, pleading the duties of his charge. The Heavenly Lords says: Quickly check (this problem) and promptly come back! The Major god then checks this man (and finds out that his) life span is already fulfilled. The punishment incurred for failing to inform by omission cannot be appealed and must be a death sentence. The Heavenly Lord says: (You have) all the more to take care of this duty since (you hold) a high position! No more negligence! Now summon this man, send him above without delay, test his efficiency (by appointing him to) a lesser charge and know the merit achieved by his service. Yes. I ask permission to do as the Heavenly Lord will instruct. Agreed, Major god. I will send this man up, appoint (him) to a lesser charge, and watch his behavior. After a short time, I will ask permission to establish the facts anew. If the newly ascended person has proved highly reliable and sincere, and if there are vacancies, he will be appointed to an office where he will fill a vacancy. The Heavenly Lord says: Do as 166 you have told, Major god, and let there be no negligence! The Major god says: Yes. I ask permission to send emissary gods to examine him from above. The Heavenly Lord says: Good. 167 This lively rendition of the strictly hierarchical and occasionally conflictual relationship of two prominent divine officials probably also tells us a lot about the popular judgment passed on the flaws of Chinese centralized administration during the early imperial era.
PENAL DEATH AND THE SUBTERRANEAN JURISDICTION OF GREAT YIN

Divine ascension and subsequent deification being such a rare gift, common people should naturally feel much more concerned about the fate of mortals of average, not to say lower, morality. They would learn from chapter 202 (sect. 7 , j . 114 ) that when numerous reports on their misconduct reach the Hall of Brightness to be collated, their names are entered in registers; officers are informed about the burden of their transgressions and, in turn, inform the officials of Great Yin ( taiyin ). 168 These officials then summon the culprits ancestors, interrogate
166 Reading for , as suggested by Yang Jilin , ed., Taiping jing jinzhu jinyi (Shijiazhuang: Hebei renmin chubanshe, 2002), p. 1398. 167 T P JH J , pp. 612 13 . 168 Officials of Great Yin: the text, first, has simply taiyin but the administrative context is implicit, as the next sentence shows: taiyin zhi li , officials of Great Yin

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and lambast them by way of punishment, 169 and order them to return home to curse their descendants for trying to escape from that burden. If their misconduct does not cease, disease will eventually be sent to the moral deviants. 170 Elsewhere, in chapter 186 (sect. 7 , j . 112 ), they would read that when mens transgressions pile up, officials of Great Yin issue accusations . All transgressions, heavy or slight, are recorded in accordance with the laws and, without men knowing of it, numerous records ( luji ) and gods circulate between the Hall of Brightness of Great Yang and the heads of departments. 171 Then the divine departments of Heaven pronounce death (sentences) and the years of life of the culprits decrease until the annihilation of their life span, that is, physical death. 172 Put in a more physiological way, in chapter 188 , they would be told that after all the observers in the residences (that is, gods in mens bodies) have checked the transgressions of people and submitted their periodical reports, the Judicial Bureau of Great Yin (Dayin facao ) calculates the burden which has been accumulated by each individual and deducts years from each mans account accordingly. 173 In all instances, the evildoers are doomed to a lethal outcome, whether the accounting of life span is alluded to or not.

Classically, Great Yin is symbolically associated with Earth, the North, winter, the agent Water, the moon, and death, as opposed to the vital force of Yang associated with Heaven, the South, summer, the agent Fire, and the sun. In Taiping jing , the astronomical and astro(T P JH J , p. 624). These officials are also mentioned in the T P JC 4, p. 7b: taiyin siguan (T P JH J , p. 214). On the title siguan , see Hucker , p. 450, no. 5677: officials of Bureaus. 169 For the legalistic meaning of le , see Hulsew, Remnants of Han Law , p. 76 (bastinado, beating). 170 T P JH J , p. 624 . Gui , just above, suggests that ancestors return as revenants (ghosts), gui ; Strickmann, Chinese Magical Medicine , pp. 7374. In chap. 196 also, if the living fail to make proper offerings to their ancestors, the ancestors ghosts will be ordered to return home under escort by an official in charge of sacrifices (on which, see n. 60, above) to inflict disease upon the living restlessly ( T P JH J , p. 605). 171 Hall of Brightness in a formulaic antithesis of the compound Great Yin appearing in the former sentence. The Palace of Darkness ( xuangong ), the obscure counterpart of the mingtang , is also known to have astronomical correspondences: it is an alternative name for the Shi (House) Mansion; see Gustave Schlegel, Uranographie chinoise: Ou preuves directes que lastronomie primitive est originaire de la Chine, et quelle a t emprunte par les anciens peuples occidentaux a la sphre chinoise: ouvrage accompagn dun atlas cleste chinois et grec (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1875), p. 280 (asterism no. 97); it is mentioned in the title of chap. 332 or 333 (sect. 10, j. 156) from MS S. 4226: Chaguan xuangong (col. 270). 172 T P JH J , p. 568 . This passage should be emended following Yu, Taiping jing zhengdu , p. 420. 173 T P JH J , p. 579 . The disyllabic taiyin in transmitted sources is frequently rendered as dayin in epigraphic material.

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calendrical correspondences of Great Yin (or peaking, or pure, Yin) are also well documented. 174 But postmortem Great Yin, also mentioned twice in the Xianger commentary and in Tao Hongjings ( 456 536 ) Zhengao (dated 499 ), turns our attention to the subterranean gloom. 175 According to Taiping jing chao , this bureaucratic Gehenna, just like Heaven, is symmetrically conceived as a replica of the empire of the human realm, with, for instance, official residences ( guanshe ) to accommodate benevolent gods and manes. 176 Chapter 202 alludes to a bureau in charge of evil ( zhu xionge zhi cao ), an underground administrative organ to which Heaven transmits documents relating to evildoers. 177 But the compound sibu (the Department of Death) may refer to the subterranean apparatus devoted to the passing away of mortals as a whole rather than to a specific administrative organ: chapter 188 , for instance, refers to human demise as entering entirely the Department of Death and returning to the Yellow Springs, 178 and a matching formula emphasizing the symbolic value of sibu as a synonym for death is offered in chapter 198 : To yearn for the Tao of life and to get away from the Department of Death. 179 Transposed into cosmological terms, this antithetic diptych naturally takes in the bipolarity of Yin and Yang, as in chapter 185 : The living
174 For examples of such correspondences in T P J , see chap. 188 : Therefore, each one of the four directions has three successive sites (literally: the first, second, and third months of the corresponding season, i.e. twelve sites in all), successively occupied one after the other; this is called Great Year (taisui ). Great Yin is behind (T P JH J , p. 578; on the astro-calendrical cycle of taiyin which shifts annually from branch to branch following the Twelve Branches cycle in correlation with the cycle of taisui , see Kalinowski, The Xingde Texts from Mawangdui, pp. 14554); and T P JC 5, p. 9b: Therefore, sovereign pneuma (diwang qi ) rises from Lesser Yang ( shaoyang ) and Great Yang (i.e. East/spring and South/summer), and constantly keeps to the direction the handle of the Northern Dipper is pointing at (doujian ); death pneuma (siwang qi ) rises from Lesser Yin (shaoyin ) and Great Yin (i.e. West/autumn and North/winter), and constantly keeps to the head of the Dipper (doukui , i.e. the opposite direction of doujian ) (T P JH J , p. 304). Here diwang qi and siwang qi refer to the cycles of rise and decline of pneuma; for analogous phases, see Marc Kalinowski, Cosmologie et divination dans la Chine ancienne: Le Compendium des cinq agents (Wuxing dayi, VIe sicle ) (Paris: EFEO, 1991), pp. 2037; 20913. The head of the Dipper (doukui ) refers to the four stars of the Dipper arranged into a square (see Schlegel, Uranographie chinoise , p. 503). By way of comparison, see also A-material chap. 101 (sect. 4, j. 65): The West and the North, Lesser Yin and Great Yin, make punishments and disasters (xing huo ), which preside over harm and death; so beings suffer from aging and decline in the West, and pass away in the North (T P JH J , p. 231). 175 See Rao, Laozi Xianger , p. 22 ; and Zhengao ( ZD , fasc. 637 40 ; C T T 1016 ) 4 , pp. 14 b 17b. The typically Heavenly Master Taoism Three Offices (sanguan ) mentioned in the same passage (pp. 16ab) are totally foreign to the T P J . 176 T P JC 8 , p. 18 a ( T P JH J , p. 698 ). 177 T P JH J , p. 622 . 178 T P JH J , p. 576 . 179 T P JH J , p. 610 . See also chap. 179 : not to communicate with the pneuma of Great Yang for a long time but to be at the Bureau of the ranks of death ( siwu zhi bu ) (T P JH J , p. 528); siwu is a metaphor for death.

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is enhanced by Yang pneuma. ... Whatever Yin pneuma enhances is inevitably in the Department of Death. 180 Though the present study focuses on non-A-material from Tai ping jing , we should consider as well A-material chapter 52 (sect. 3 , j . 40 ), which also deals with morals and the afterlife. We learn from the masters own lips that when the newly deceased reach the subterranean realm of the dead, they are interrogated on their lifetime deeds and experience, 181 in order to have their name records ( mingji ) fixed according to their lifetime deeds, and to be punished on this basis. 182 In a similar fashion, non-A chapter 179 warns mortals who persist in misbehaving that they will soon see the Gate of Ghosts . 183 Then Earth spirits will interrogate ( wen ) them, in order to check the correctness of their conduct records. If their answers and their records differ, severe ghosts will inflict punishment on them repeatedly until they admit their wrongs. 184 Their names will then be transmitted to the Bureau of Fate (Mingcao) for a final verification and, their life allotment coming to exhaustion, they will enter earth . Then their misdemeanors will transfer to their descendants . 185 The chthonian gods responsible for this judicial interrogation belong to a specific administrative organ called the Office of the Soil (Tufu ). Chapter 181 (sect. 7 , j . 111 ), in which, as we have seen, human fate is determined in accordance with calendrical computations (see above), links men born from the Earth (ordinary mortals) with this Office of the Soil. 186 Back to chapter 188 , we learn that once the Judicial Bureau of Great Yin has calculated the chengfu and reduced each mans account accordingly (as quoted above), ones account comes to exhaustion. Yin gods of the Earth together with officers from the Office of the Soil are then summoned to collect the bones of the material body of
T P JH J , p. 565. Suo geng is rendered as the times he has repented in Kaltenmark, The Ideology of the Tai-ping ching , p. 36. 182 T P JH J , pp. 72 73 . 183 Through which the dead come from and return to the unseen world, located at the northeast angle of the world, also the northeast angle or sector of the altar in Taoist liturgy; see John Lagerwey, Wu-Shang Pi-Yao: Somme taoste du VIe sicle (Paris: EFEO, 1981), p. 75. They will soon see the Gate of ghosts: they will soon pass away. 184 For fu in Han legalistic terminology, see Hulsew, Remnants of Han Law , p. 77 (to submit, i.e. to admit the truth of the accusation). As to earth spirits, in T P J chthonian entities are also called di lingqi (chap. 182; T P JH J , p. 554), or the rulers of the Earth, dizhu ( chap. 179; T P JH J , pp. 528, 534), or again the rulers of the soil, tuzhu (chap. 187; T P JH J , p. 572). 185 T P JH J , p. 526 . See also chap. 185 : Once those who are not benevolent reach the underground, their misdemeanors transfer to their descendants ( yang liu zisun ) (T P JH J , p 564). 186 T P JH J , p. 548 .
180 181

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the person newly passed away and to interrogate ( kao ) his or her ethereal spirits (hun shen ). 187 An analogous warning is to be found in chapter 199 : when malevolence does not cease, one will be connected with the death records and ones name transmitted to the Office of the Soil, where ones bones will be kept. Ones ethereal spirits (here , essential hun ) will then be imprisoned and interrogated ( wen ) for information on their hosts lifetime deeds. Should their statements differ, they would be beaten by way of punishment ( lezhi ) just like ones ancestors, in an excerpt quoted earlier and suffer a great deal. 188 Chapter 194 (sect. 7 , j . 114 ) promises malevolent people themselves such a fate: after an untimely death , they will be beaten ( lezhi ) underground and reprimanded for their deeds, and will endure hardship for the pain they inflicted, without enjoying a single moment of happiness. 189 Thus were metaphorically interpreted the decomposition of the corpse after burying and assumed to be painful the fate of the perverted when the time for judgment has come. We have already met the Yellow Springs in A-material, in the context of proscriptions relating to the Earth. The Yellow Springs also appear in the cosmological context of the opposing cycles of blossoming and decline of penal laws and virtue described in chapter 60 (sect. 3 , j . 44 ): on the eleventh month, dade (that is, virtue as a cosmic principle) dwells under earth, de (individualized Virtue) is indoors, and the living beings, complying with virtue, enter below the Yellow Springs. 190 But in non-A text, where this damp and dull place is specifically associated with the malevolent, the Yellow Springs become a penal institution for postmortem confinement, an afterlife jail for mortals convicted of offending conduct who have been sentenced to death. Chapter 106 (generally classified as A-material though of dubious dialogue form, as we have seen) opposes the mandate of life of the benevolent, which is subordinated to Heaven, to the mandate of life of the malevolent, which is subordinated to Earth, 191 and adds that the malevolent will eventually return ( gui ) to the Yellow Springs below. 192 Chapter 185 , in an analogous, binary formula, contrasts the
187 T P JH J , p. 579 . See also chap. 195 : When many accumulated transgressions have piled up, they are sent down to the bureau in charge (i.e. the Office of the Soil), which recalls the ethereal spirits (hun shen ) of this man (i.e. the culprit) and interrogate (kaowen ) them on (the culprits) deeds (T P JH J , p. 600). 188 T P JH J , p. 615 . Luezhi here is imprisonment and torture in Y, O Soul, Come Back!, p. 390. 189 T P JH J , pp. 598 99 . 190 T P JH J , p. 105 . On xingde cycles, see also n. 37 , above. 191 Chap. 185 compares those whose mandate of life ( ming ) is linked to the soil with grass and trees, birds and beasts, i.e. plants and animals ( T P JH J , pp. 56465). 192 T P JH J , p. 279 .

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benevolent, who will enjoy extra lifetime, with the malevolent, who will enter ( ru ) the Yellow Springs below. 193 And chapter 194 adds that, in their subterranean penal exile, dead evildoers will become malevolent ghosts and forever be refused a share of the bliss of benevolent manes . 194 From chapters chapter 189 (sect. 7 , j . 112 ) and chapter 202 , 195 we grasp that one of their tasks will be to cooperate with otherworldly authorities in tracing evildoers still alive but already doomed to an imminent penal sentence due to their misconduct. Another case of former delinquents going into service with the very institution which sealed their fate? 196
GUILT, INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY, AND PROSPECTS FOR REDEMPTION

The idea that one should regard ones own behavior as the single causal factor of the auspicious or inauspicious events one encounters, a theme tackled more than once by the authors of Taiping jing , belongs to classical Chinese views and, of course, is in no way unique to this document. 197 Yet in the context of the transitional ideology of the Taiping jing , its formulation offers a curious compromise between the realm of religious belief and what Western philosophy, since the Age of the Enlightenment, would call rationalism, as exemplified by the final part of chapter 188 (sect. 7 , j . 112 ) which, in order to promote individual realization of self-responsibility as regards the hazards of human existence, shifts from the legalistic sphere of divine retribution to the sphere of human law: Some reports (on human misdeeds) are not due to Heaven, (in which case) ghosts, 198 gods, and ethereal creatures may
T P JH J , p. 566. T P JH J , p. 599. By way of comparison, see also A-material chaps. 103: Thus, (those) who do not become benevolent men naturally become bandits ( daozei ) and, once dead, will become malevolent ghosts (T P JH J , pp. 2501); and 52, which defines three kinds of gui : manes who roam about delightedly ( leyou gui ), resulting from men who have stuck to benevolent studies (shanxue ) during their life time; distressed ghosts (chouku gui ) from those who have been distressed; and malevolent ghosts ( egui ) from malevolent men (T P JH J , p. 73) a threefold taxonomy on the same wavelength as the general ideology of the stratum. 195 Respectively, T P JH J , p. 580 (to be emended after Yu, Taiping jing zhengdu , p. 430 ); and T P JH J , p. 622. 196 For a similar phenomenon in Western European society around 1800 , see Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), pp. 3078. 197 See, e.g., various sources quoted in Erkes, God of Death, pp. 205 6 , n. 2 . 198 This passage obviously responds to the belief that the dead may file plaints in the other world to harm the living (there are evidences that, since the earliest stage of Chinese civiliza193 194

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not inflict disease on men. The cause (of such reports) always lies in the investigations of one another and the denunciations of one another. Major transgressions entail the death [penalty]. Up and down [the punishment scale, culprits] are condemned to build bridges spanning rivers, [or to work in] mountains or by the sea, 199 each one in accord with the gravity of the case, each one according to ones deeds, and no one is omitted. Civil officers in charge of postal relay stations ( youting ), in each prefecture ( fu ) and district, will investigate the cases according to the laws. Do not wrongly hold ghosts, gods, and ethereal creatures responsible for (your) misfortune! 200 Similarly, we read in chapter 189 that, inasmuch as auspicious or inauspicious happenstance proceeds from human will, there is no reason to blame divine emissaries (who report mens deeds to Heaven) for what one incurs because of ones own intentions and conduct, nor to have resentment. 201 Human behavior being loaded with such potentially irretrievable consequences, occasional as well as habitual offenders may be anxiously looking for partial remission at least, if not all-inclusive pardon like their more fortunate Christian counterparts. By following to the letter the writings which expound prohibitions, one may hope to have ones minor transgressions blotted out , 202 but how could major ones be ever forgiven , asks the unnamed narrator in chapter 199 . 203 In chapter 182 , the authors take the case of a supremely benevolent man another highly idealized moral example whose merit will be calculated and transgressions removed by the divine officials in charge. But, unsurprisingly, such a perfect individual is said to conform to righteousness and the burden of his or her past transgressions to be insignificant. 204 Notoriously incorrigible villains cannot expect to benefit from this hopeful way out.
tion, ancestors were viewed as responsible for the hardship incurred by their descendants); see Nickerson, Great Petition; and Strickmann, Chinese Magical Medicine , pp. 1320. 199 For matching examples of Han hard labour sentences, see Hulsew, Remnants of Han Law , pp. 12832. 200 T P JH J , p. 579 . On youting , see n. 50 , above. For fu, Hucker , p. 216 , no. 2034 . 201 T P JH J , p. 580 . 202 On the blotting out ( chujie ) of minor wrongs by means of repentance, see also chap. 182 (T P JH J , p. 552). 203 T P JH J , p. 615 . 204 T P JH J , p. 556 . The impossibility to have excessively accrued transgressions blotted out is also clearly expressed in chaps. 179 (T P JH J , p. 535) and 182 (T P JH J , p. 550).

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Against such a bureaucratic and moral background of constant recording of acts, the widest range of liberating prospects is perhaps offered by the concept of jiechu , to remove, annul, cancel, blot out significantly, a compound still used as a common as well as legalistic term in modern Chinese or chujie , a quasi-synonym of jiechu . 205 In the Jiechu chapter of Lunheng , Wang Chong criticizes the lack of rationality in the logic and purpose of jiechu exorcist rituals (and of other sacrifices as well) and states twice that all depends upon man, and not on ghosts. 206 But, in both A- and non-A-material from Tai ping jing , the indications of this panacea go far beyond the boundaries of localized exorcism or individual responsibility. To begin with A-material (chapter 51 [sect. 3 , j . 35] ), not only is a disciple congratulated by the master for correctly answering that the way to distinguish between right and wrong is to check whether the effectiveness of an action allows the removal ( jiechu ) of any contracted disease 207 another case of response or retribution but, furthermore (chapter 212 [sect. 7 , j . 119 ]), the questions of the disciples to the master are specifically aimed at substituting for the words of Saints ( shengren ) created by Heaven who failed in their mission to have its maladies removed ( jiechu ). 208 In chapter 154 (sect. 6 , j . 97 ), the catechism of the master will cancel out ( jiechu ) the lasting social disorder, wrath of Heaven, and distress of the Emperor caused by the perversion of those who oppose the true Tao and mysterious Virtue . 209 As for the specific pneuma responsible for the rulers distress, it may be dispelled ( jiechu ), according to chapter 206 (sect. 7 , j . 116 ), and the state of Great Peace attained subsequently, by musical performance and singing in accordance with the cosmic principles. 210 Chapter 127 (sect. 6 , j . 86 ) states that one may even remove ( chu ) the maladies of Heaven by meditating on Heaven and, by meditating on a prince of Virtue, dispel ( chujie ) calamities and appease the princely person. 211 Similar occurrences are to be found in Taiping jing chao . 212 By way of contrast, in non-A-material, where jiechu never appears, the occurrences of chujie relate twice to the dispelling of inherited burden ( chengfu ); once, to the removal of minor transgressions; and once,
205 On allotropy cases (AB/BA-pattern disyllabic compounds) in T P J , see Huang Jianning , Taiping jing zhong de tongsu yixu ci , Sichuan shifan daxue xuebao 28.1 (2001), pp. 6266. 206 Forke, Lun-Hng 1 , pp. 535 , 537 . 207 T P JH J , p. 71 . 208 T P JH J , p. 675 . 209 T P JH J , p. 434 . 210 T P JH J , p. 635 . 211 T P JH J , p. 314 . 212 T P JC 4 , p. 9 b: one of the numerous aims of the much-needed renewal of cosmic order is to dispel (jiechu ) the disasters provoked by the resentment of Heaven and Earth, have the distress of the Emperor terminated, people loving each other, and each one of the ten thousand beings back in its place ( T P JH J , p. 216; from a non-dialogue fragment); T P JC 8, p. 13a:

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to the removal of human suffering. 213 They attest to the possibility of permanent remission. Undoubtedly, the most effective way to forgiveness is to reflect on (ones) transgressions in order to blame oneself and to feel remorse for (ones) transgressions ( , or , literally self-remorse), an idea expressed throughout our material by various compounds combining these characters, sometimes into full sentences such as to reflect on (ones) transgressions and to blame oneself , or to blame oneself and to feel remorse for (ones) transgressions , or again to blame oneself for the burden of (ones) transgressions . 214 Sparse occurrences of to confess transgressions , to knock the ground with the forehead , and to beat, or slap, oneself remind us of the practices of early Heavenly Master Taoism. 215 As a useful support for completing successfully this moral introspection, one may use reiterated admonitions as well as the texts in Heaven above. 216 The theme of repentance is central, but not peculiar, to chapter 182 , precisely entitled: The life span of men of benevolence and humaneness who blame themselves (for their transgressions) is at the Bureau of Longevity. 217 Thanks to repentance,
Heaven has instructed the master to produce his text with the intention of removing (jiechu ) the maladies of Heaven and Earth, Yin and Yang, the Emperor, the people and the ten thousand beings, i.e. all cosmic and social dysfunction ( T P JH J , p. 694). 213 See chaps. 179 ( T P JH J , pp. 536 ; 551 ; 552 ) and 192 ( T P JH J , p. 591 ). In A-material, the liberation from chengfu is usually termed jie , literally to untie, unfasten; e.g., chaps. 48 (sect. 3, j. 37; T P JH J , p. 57, five occurrences; p. 61), and 66 (sect. 3, j. 49; T P JH J , p. 163, two occurrences; p. 165). 214 For combinations including hui , ze , guo , etc., see T P J , chaps. 66 , 179 , 180 83 , 186 87 , 190, 19697, and 2001 (all, except 66, strictly non-A): zihui (8 occurrences, not counting those in other compounds); huiguo (6, not counting those in other compounds); zize huiguo (4); zize guofu (3); siguo zize (2); ziguo ze (2); and (1 each): zize ziguo , zize zihui , zi zehui , zi zeguo , zi keze , and zi huize . Zize and siguo also appear in several chaps., A (7 each) as well as non-A (zi ze : 23; si guo : 4). See also T P JC 4, p. 6a (zize ); 5, pp. 6b7a: (huiguo ; 4 occurrences) both passages probably originating from non-A-material. 215 All three compounds appear in strictly non-A material. See chaps. 182 , 195 196 , and 201: shouguo (3 occurrences); koutou zibo (3); and zibo koutou (1). Apart from the previous expressions, the disyllabic compounds koutou (2 in A-material, 3 in non-Amaterial) and zibo (1 in non-A-material) also appear by themselves. On the meaning of zibo , see the following passage of a ritual described in Tao Hongjings Dengzhen yinjue (ca. 493; ZD , fasc. 193; C T T 441) 3, p. 8a: then, facing North, one prostrates oneself twice, slaps oneself three times, and says (after the German translation from Ursula-Angelika Cedzich, Das Ritual der Himmelsmeister im Spiegel frher Quellen: bersetzung und Untersuchung des liturgischen Materials im dritten chan des Teng-chen yin-cheh , Ph.D. diss. (Julius-Maximilians-Universitt, Wrzburg, 1987), p. 116: Dann wendet mann sich nach Norden, verneigt sich zweimal, versetzt sich selbst drei Schlge und spricht). 216 See chaps. 187 ( T P JH J , p. 573 ) and 190 ( T P JH J , pp. 584 5 ). 217 Shanren ren zize nian zai shoucao (T P JH J , p. 549). The original title has gui in place of ze , but the correct reading is suggested by 8 occurrences of the compound

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ones dossier may be transferred to a safer place, for the malevolent capable of self-repentance will have their names transferred to the Bureau of Benevolence conversely, the benevolent who swing over to malevolence will have (their names) transferred back to the Bureau of Malevolence. 218 Repentance may also enable culprits to return to a state of unabridged life span allotment. 219 And, as one requisite among several others, repentance may contribute to the recovery of human fertility. 220 The Heavenly Lord highly values mortals who repent. He declares, in chapter 180 , that when men are capable of blaming themselves and of repenting of their transgressions, he orders gods in charge of the registers of life to transfer the names of these men to the Bureau of Longevity, to grant them extra lifetime up to 120 years, 221 and to provide them with descendants. It is worth specifying for the attention of those who may feel interested that the beneficiary of the Heavenly Lords indulgence is said to have been repenting round the clock, for several years. 222 Heaven undoubtedly likes mortals to confess their transgressions ( shouguo ; see, for instance, chapter 196 ). 223 But chapter 195 warns us that, should the statements made by the ones hun spirits while interrogated underground differ from the facts recorded in Heaven, this persistently deceptive attitude would prevent the faults of the deceased from being remitted , even if a full confession of transgressions ( shouguo ) eventually occurs. 224 But, if a primary requisite for sincere, fruitful repentance is time, fear certainly constitutes its psychological root. For, as a result of the constant watch which is exerted on them as in an Orwellian nightmare,
zize throughout this chapter: see T P JH J , pp. 550 (2 occurrences); 551 (2); 555; 556 (3). 218 T P JH J , p. 552 . 219 See chaps. 185 ( T P JH J , p. 566 ), 188 ( T P JH J , p. 575 ), and 181 ( T P JH J , p. 549 ). 220 See chap. 188 ( T P JH J , p. 575 ; one requisite among others, which include the reading of undefined documents). 221 According to four passages from T P JC , 120 years is either the longest of three orders of longevity (120, 80, and 60 years respectively; see T P JC 2, pp. 11b12a; 10, pp. 5ab), or the longest of five (120, 100, 80, 60, and 50 years respectively; see T P JC 6, p. 7a), or the second of three (130, 120, and 100 years respectively; see T P JC 8, pp. 14b15a). 222 T P JH J , p. 546 . For variations on this theme, see also chaps. 179 : not daring not to reflect on (ones) transgressions a single moment (T P JH J , p. 538); 182: self-remorse from morning till night (T P JH J , pp. 55051); plus, also put in the Heavenly Lords mouth: I heard that this man has been blaming himself and has been feeling remorse for his transgressions for years (T P JH J , p. 551), or, in the Major Gods mouth: this man has been blaming himself for a very long time ( T P JH J , p. 551); to reflect day and night on the burden of (ones) transgressions (T P JH J , p. 555); 197: to blame oneself and to feel remorse for (ones) transgressions, for numerous days (T P JH J , p. 606); and 199: to blame oneself, regardless of (the passing of) mornings and nights ( T P JH J , p. 613). 223 T P JH J , p. 605 . 224 T P JH J , p. 600 .

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mortals live in continuous fear of the burden of their transgressions never being removed but rather reported by numerous gods; fear of the content of registers even the slightest evil deeds being brought to the attention of the highest divine authorities; fear of the sanction of the unseen judges for their past deeds; fear of the decreasing of their count; and, ultimately, fear of death so overwhelming a fear that the miserable sinners often shed tears on their past misdeeds. 225 Chapter 192 (sect. 7 , j . 114 ): speaking while frequently shedding tears, they ask Heaven to forgive them their transgressions, slapping themselves ( zibo ) and begging for pity, and towards Earth, knock the ground with their foreheads ( koutou ), without avoiding splinters of stone, in the middle of filth. 226 But, adds chapter 201 , if one sins anew once forgiven, knocking the ground with ones forehead will prove fruitless. 227 And, once transgressions rashly perpetrated have brought their daring author to a lethal outcome, no via lacrimae will lead the belated penitent to redemption. 228 The mercy of the Heavenly Lord has limits and should not be gambled with nor indefinitely postponed.
MORALIZED COSMOLOGY AND IMPOSED DISEASE

My earlier analysis of the epistemological content of the Taiping jing pointed out the central position occupied by writing in A-material, which stages a Heavenly Master urging the compilation of a compendium of orthodox knowledge while advertising the revelations bestowed upon him by Heaven. 229 But, in non-A Taiping jing material, writing is not emphasized as the ideal vehicle of Truth nor is there any master dealing with some compendium to be edited by a conclave of enlightened men, submitted to the Throne, then distributed to men all over the world. Now writing, as purely administrative documents unattainable by mortals, rather embodies the restless recording, reporting, and archiving of human deeds by omniscient divine officials of the unseen world, unbeknown to men. From Taiping jing A- to non-A-material, in terms of Western philosophy, the reader witnesses a complete shift of focus from the sphere of epistemology to that of morals. Both views, of course, are far from being incompatible. For instance, they both pertain to religious belief, and Taoist communities will needfully draw on
225 See chaps. 179 for tears ( T P JH J , p. 528 ) and fear ( T P JH J , p. 529 ), 180 for tears ( T P JH J , p. 546), 182 for tears and fear of death (T P JH J , pp. 551; 556), and 198 for fear of the burden of transgressions not being removed but reported by gods (T P JH J , p. 610). 226 T P JH J , p. 591 . 227 T P JH J , p. 621 . 228 Chap. 66 from A-material ( T P JH J , p. 160 ). A similar statement appears in the T P JC 5 , p. 14b (T P JH J , pp. 30910). 229 See Espesset, Revelation, pp. 82 93 .

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both of them to establish the prevalence of their revealed scripturary corpus (writing as vehicle of Truth) and ensure social order within the parishes (writing as administrative records). Remarkably, despite centuries of Buddho-Taoist mutual influences in the Chinese mainland, Taoist rituals in present-day Taiwan still perpetuate this early belief in a bureaucratic otherworld and in the contractual nature of the bonds that link mortals to it subterranean judges dealing with the matters brought to their court; otherworldly treasurers cashing in the repayment of debts incurred by mortals; filling in, by the officiating priest and his assistants, of numerous administrative forms, some of which are to be delivered to the nether world by a mounted emissary whose journey is theatrically performed rituals which follow procedures modeled on the protocol of the early imperial court. 230 Taiping jing chao documents this contractual nature of the relationship between men and gods: men of High Antiquity were bound to numerous gods by contracts , and the Heavenly Lord himself, before issuing his written orders, has to consult his own contracts so as to clarify the documents submitted to him. 231 Then, no wonder that a legalistic term like to interrogate , or to ask in examination, 232 occurs several times in Taiping jing whether in this-worldly or otherworldly context: interrogation of the deceased by subterranean bookkeepers; interrogation of bodily entities on their hosts behavior; and heavenly interrogation of perverse, or heterodox, gods invoked by so-called religious specialists who use them to get hold of the wealth of credulous sick people. 233 In my former analysis of the triadic scheme which pervades most of Taiping jing (and Taiping jing chao ) A-stratum, I pointed out the absence of moral value in the cosmological threefold pattern of Yang/
230 See John Lagerwey, Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1987), pp. 49237, and Patrice Favas documentary video on funerary rituals; Patrice Fava, author, director and producer, Les dieux de la Chine: Le livre des morts, 16mm video film, CNRS AV (SERDDAV), 1977. On the contractual nature of bonds between men and gods, see also Valerie Hansen, Negotiating Daily Life in Traditional China: How Ordinary People Used Contracts: 6001400 (New Haven: Yale U.P., 1995), pp. 147229 (Part II: Contracting with the Gods). 231 T P JC 4 , pp. 5 b 6 a ( T P JH J , p. 212 ). 232 These translations follow Hulsew, Remnants of Han Law , p. 74 . However, in T P J Astratum, this disyllabic means investigation, judicial inquiry rather than interrogation (though, in some cases, there may be only a fine line between the former and the latter). See chaps. 51 (sect. 3, j. 39): investigation into the reliability of ordinary affairs (T P JH J , p. 71); 127: investigation by sages into the origins of abnormal phenomena (T P JH J , p. 326), judicial inquiry by superior subalterns into people suspected of leaking State secrets ( T P JH J , p. 328); and 137: investigation, on the orders of the Emperor himself, into local robbery cases ( T P JH J , p. 385). See also T P JC 5, p. 7a, to interrogate (T P JH J , p. 302). 233 See chaps. 186 ( T P JH J , p. 569 ), 195 ( T P JH J , p. 600 ), and 201 ( T P JH J , p. 620 ); and A-

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Heaven, Yin/Earth, and Central Harmony/Man, the synthetic product of their conflation, an ideology which recognizes the existence of both good/Yang and evil/Yin as necessary principles of universal equilibrium and allows the existence of a third principle of harmonious dynamism. 234 But, in non-A-material, a strongly negative moral judgment is passed on evil, still associated with Yin (especially paroxysmal Yin, that is, the subterranean Hades for persisting evildoers) but unequivocally condemned and rejected, while the triadic notion of harmony and cosmic equilibrium is discarded in favor of a strictly ethical, dualistic Yang/Yin radicalism. In this strongly moralistic worldview, good deeds and evil deeds now draw a clear line between innocence and guilt, and human postmortem fate is ultimately decided by judges of the bureaucratic unseen world. But the benevolent who are awarded ascension to Heaven and allowed to mingle with its divine inhabitants are still subject to constant watch, like all the other gods. A passage of the rsum provided by Taiping jing chao where chapters 5664 of Taiping jing are now missing alludes to their fearing faults being entered in surveillance records. 235 In chapter 187 (sect. 7 , j . 112 ), those guilty of negligence incur a personal punishment in the world of Man (on Earth): to sell vegetables on the market of the capital, decked out in an ugly, despicable exterior, a degrading task lasting for forty, thirty, or ten years according to the gravity of the fault, before being reinstated as a divine emissary. 236 Or elsewhere (chapter 198 ), for failing to report in time the existence of men of merit: to sell medicinal drugs and to heal disease for ten years in the capital Luoyang, but without being allowed to receive much money from the sick, and when the punishment is over, to return and
stratum chap. 46 (sect. 3, j. 36; T P JH J , p. 51). See also T P JC 5, p. 9b (T P JH J , p. 304), for a judicial analogy in the context of the cycles of pneuma. 234 E.g., T P JC 9 , pp. 1 b 2 a: The nature of the universe is half Yang, half Yin ( ban yang ban yin )... The nature of the universe is half good, half evil (T P JH J , p. 702; for the extended quotation, see Espesset, vau-leau, rebours, p. 70). Yet, in several instances, A material shows a clear preference for Yang, and not only by contrast with Yin: the threefold pattern itself, when interpreted as a temporal, cosmogonical process, turns radically into a descending logic of dispersal and decline in which only Yang/Heaven (phase 1) retains original, unaltered perfection, while Yin/Earth (phase 2) and Central Harmony/Man (phase 3) sink deeper and deeper into a general and irreparable corruption. This alternative triadic ideology paves the way for the idea of a necessary reversion to the origin, to the One, and for its latent totalitarian repercussions: one Truth, one single knowledge (orthodoxy), one single ruler (the Emperor). As long as Yin and Yang partake of a general cosmological worldview, however, they share the same legitimacy, albeit in a somewhat Manichaean way. 235 T P JH J , p. 212 . An incomplete translation of this fragment of T P JC 4 , pp. 5 b 8 a ( T P JH J , pp. 21214) appears in Petersen, Taiping Jing and Clepsydra Reform, pp. 14345. 236 T P JH J , p. 570 .

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report to their bureau, be put to the test for one year, then reinstated in ones charge. 237 In A-material, the universe itself suffers from maladies provoked by the social and political dysfunction of the human sphere, and one of the primary purposes of the revelations bestowed upon the master by Heaven is to have these maladies permanently removed. 238 Illness, associated with disasters, gives evidence that the time is right to have the masters writings published: If the appearing (of these writings) makes people sick , then Heaven wants them to be concealed ; if hiding them makes people sick, then Heaven wants them to appear and be circulated, states chapter 176 (sect. 7 , j . 108 ). 239 The following catalogued etiology from the Taiping jing chao reflects this well-known belief in the absolute interdependence of macrocosm and physiological microcosm: Numerous [cases of] headache [mean that] heavenly pneuma ( qi ) are not content. Numerous [cases of] pain in the legs [mean that] earthly pneuma are not content. Numerous [cases of] pain in the five organs mean that the pneuma of the five agents are fighting. Numerous [cases of] disease in the four limbs [mean that] the pneuma of the four seasons are not harmonious. Numerous [cases of] deafness and blindness [mean that] the three luminaries have lost their regularity. Numerous [cases of] chill and high temperature [mean that] Yin and Yang pneuma are wrangling. Numerous [cases of] pathological dizziness [mean that] the ten thousand beings have lost their place. Numerous [cases of] disease [caused by] ghostly creatures [mean that] the divine entities of Heaven and Earth are angry. Numerous [cases of] lethal pathological heat [mean that] the pneuma of Great Yang are baneful. Numerous [cases of] lethal pathological cold [mean that] the pneuma of Great Yin are harmful. Numerous [cases of] sudden death [mean that]

T P JH J , p. 611. See also p. 612 in the same chapter. See Lai Chi-tim, The Daoist Concept of Central Harmony in the Scripture of Great Peace : Human Responsabilities for the Maladies of Nature, in N. J. Girardot, James Miller, and Liu Xiaogan, eds., Daoism and Ecology: Ways within a Cosmic Landscape (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U.P., 2001), pp. 95111. This paper originally appeared in Chinese as Cong Taiping jing de zhonghe sixiang kan ren yu ziran de guanxi, tiandi jibing yu ren de zeren , in Zheng Zhiming , ed., Daojiao wenhua de jinghua, di er jie haixia liangan Daojiao xueshu yantaohui lunwen ji (Dalin, Taiwan: Nanhua daxue zongjiao wenhua yanjiu zhongxin, 2000) 1, pp. 4975. 239 T P JH J , p. 514 . In the subsequent sentences of the passage, tao is associated to cang , to bury, to conceal.
237 238

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the pneuma of punishment are too rash. 240 Numerous [cases of] pathological inflation of pneuma or diminishing of pneuma [mean that] the eight conjunctions are conflicting and disorderly. Now among Heaven and Earth, and Yin and Yang, everything has lost its place, and disease and harm are inflicted on the ten thousand beings. 241 This portrayal of cosmic disorder and its specific pathological consequences does not take into account external or internal incidental pathogenic factors. An etiology deep-rooted in symbolism and universal in the fullest sense of the word, it does not, as such, take into account any localized distinctive characteristics, neither does it give any specific cure, but we may assume that only the restoration of cosmic harmony and equilibrium will guarantee total recovery. By contrast, sickness, as one of the facets of localized human suffering, loses its cosmological impact in the moralized worldview of non-A-material. While the master explained, in A-text chapter 136 (sect. 6 , j . 92 ), how disease may be expelled by ingesting glyphs written with ink the color of cinnabar (doubled characters , or ), 242 sickness now remains incurable (as far as ordinary doctors and heterodox religious practitioneers invoking false gods of illness are concerned). Moreover, associated with lifetime abridgement, illness is now to be regarded as the necessary penalty for mens misbehavior, imposed by superhuman bureaucratic forces as a response to the ignorance of, or deliberate disregard for, the specific applications of cosmic principles mentioned above: breach of soil proscriptions, improper offerings to the ancestors, absence of filial piety, blatant malevolence. To complete this moral and legalist cause-and-effect scheme of conviction/illness and remission/healing, divine punishment may involve an active and desinterested contribution to the healing of other people in the world of man, as we have just seen a world reportedly ravaged by repeated epidemics throughout the second century and till the end of the Han. 243
I.e., punishments are imposed in the wrong time (see n. 148, above). T P JC 2, p. 12ab (T P JH J , p. 23). Bajie , eight conjunctions, or tropic nodes, designate solstices, equinoxes, and the first day of each season. 242 T P JH J , p. 380 . The extant T P J still contains four juan ( 104 7 ) of such doubled characters. T P JC states that therapeutic heavenly symbolic glyphs (tianfu ), also written in cinnabar, are to be ingested and visualized in the stomach ( fu ) for a very long time in order to have heavenly medicine (tianyi ) descend into the adepts body, dispel all kinds of disease, and ensure longevity; see T P JC 6, pp. 2b3a (T P JH J , p. 330). 243 Historical sources report fifteen epidemics during the Eastern Han, thirteen of which took place between 119 and 217 ad, inclusive; see Yoshimoto Shji , Dky to fur
240 241

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In early-imperial China, collective responsibility was still a standard feature of penal law. 244 The Taiping jing itself, not surprisingly, attests to such conceptions. 245 But within this text we are witnessing a shift from a cosmic responsibility of Man viewed as collective, hereditary and cumulative, for dispelling the present consequences of the past deeds of ancestors (the idea of chengfu , mostly, but not strictly, appearing in A-material), to a more religious, moral, and individual responsibility for ones own deeds in ones lifetime , the burden of ones transgressions, mostly in non-A-material). 246 For instance, while A-material seems somewhat skeptical about the effectiveness of remorse and rather values a collective reflection on ancestors past transgressions with the aim of removing the ancestors chengfu and their lasting consequences today, 247 individual repentance of ones personal transgressions, as we have seen, is emphasized throughout non-A-material. Significantly, in A-material, people who lack self-responsibility wrongly blame the Emperor for their misfortune, 248 rather than Heaven, or unseen entities such as ghosts, in non-A-material. So, where mankind as a whole was
(Tokyo: Hirakawa shuppansha, 1989), p. 27; Lin, Ji bing chju no igaku zhong jie zhe , pp. 17981. It is now well established that repeated epidemics and famine strongly contributed to the development of organized religions and to the social climate of unrest and the emergence of self-proclaimed emperors which culminated in the collapse of the Han; see Lin Fu-shih, Dong Han wanqi de jiyi yu zongjiao , Lishi yuyan yanjiusuo jikan 66.3 (1995), pp. 695745; Hans Bielenstein, Wang Mang, the Restoration of the Han Dynasty, and Later Han, in Denis Twitchett and Michael Loewe, eds., The Cambridge History of China , vol. 1, The Chin and Han Dynasties: 221 B.C.-A.D. 220 (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1986), pp. 22390; Burchard J. Mansvelt Beck, The Fall of Han, in ibid, pp. 31776; also Etienne Balazs, La crise sociale et la philosophie politique la fin des Han, T P 39.13 (1949), pp. 83131. 244 See Hulsew, Remnants of Han Law , p. 8 : another characteristic of the archaic mode of thought which continued to prevail was the undivided responsibility of the group for acts committed by its members (about Qin and Han law); also Lon Vandermeersch, La formation du Lgisme: Recherche sur la constitution dune philosophie politique caractristique de la Chine ancienne (Paris: EFEO, 1965), pp. 184200. 245 See chap. 189 : when superior subalterns have heard of an ignoramus who is called a malevolent son (ezi ) because of his misdeeds, their subordinate officials arrest him and promptly inflict punishment on him ( xing qi shen ); this misfortune extends to (his) close and distant relatives, who share the blame for his fault ( T P JH J , p. 580). 246 Strikingly, the single occurrence of guofu in A material (out of nine in the whole text) designates the series of errors made by the disciples during their catechists lecture (chap. 151 in sect. 6, j. 96; T P JH J , p. 405), not the burden of accumulated moral transgressions. 247 See chaps. 66 : feeling remorse once one has been convicted of a fault ( zui ding ) is not being cautious, for it is useless ( wu yi ) (T P JH J , pp. 16465); 164 (sect. 6, j. 101, a non-dialogue passage since appended to a picture, but generally treated as A-material): there is no coming back, even feeling remorse is useless (wu yi ) (T P JH J , p. 458); and 103: each one personally reflects on transgressions to remove the punishment of the ancestors chengfu (T P JH J , p. 255). 248 See chap. 152 (sect. 6 , j. 96 ): ignoramuses do not personally reflect on their own faults but shift all the blame for their transgressions onto the Emperor ( T P JH J , p. 418).

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formerly called upon by the master to put an end to general cosmic disorders caused by the persisting effects of the ancestors misconduct (A-material), the adept now stands alone with his or her own consciousness, facing his or her own sins and their consequences on the duration of his or her own life span and fate after death (non-A-material). This individualization of human responsibility shows through in such passages as the following excerpt from chapter 179 , in which the repetition of shen (ones person, the individual) and zi (oneself) emphasizes the importance of individual realization: (Inasmuch as your) life mandate depends closely on your person, why beat your breast and invoke Heaven? If you do not personally purify yourself, who will you purify? If you do not personally love yourself, who will you love? If you do not personally perfect yourself, who will you perfect? If you do not personally meditate on yourself, who will you meditate on? If you do not personally put the blame on yourself, who will you put the blame on? Reflect on these words repeatedly, and do not resent ghosts ( gui ) and gods ( shen ). 249 Thus we may interpret this moralization and individualization of guilt in non-A-material of the Taiping jing as closely following a general, wider phenomenon the moralization of cosmology. 250 If the penal emphasis of law is a well-established feature of Chinese culture and history, 251 the penal emphasis of some Chinese religious ideologies, to my knowledge, has never been pointed out. It is no accident that, in modern Chinese usage, the word zuiren designates both a criminal and a sinner, and fanzui designates sin as much as (legal) offense. In this regard, the Taiping jing offers perhaps one of the earliest explicit testimonies of the moral penalization of human behavior, outside of the Judeo-Christian world yet, in many ways, remarkably similar to its guilt complex or morbid taste for redemptive self-induced suffering through mortification. Further, the semiological definition by the authors of non-A-material of a series of human moral types or rather, as modern legislators have put it, psychological profiles which logically end up superseding the technical definition of guidelines for proper moral conduct and the objective application

T P JH J , p. 527. Also noticed, in other Han sources, by Aihe Wang, Cosmology and Political Culture in Early China (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2000), pp. 12972. 251 As noted in Bodde and Morris, Law in Imperial China , e.g., pp. 3 4 , 28 .
249 250

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of relevant penalties to convicted offenders, strikingly matches Foucaults formula of a homo criminalis . 252 Once again, morality and the state agree on the control and standardization of individuals and their mind, for, in such a logic of intentions, each individual in a disciplined society is a potential delinquent or criminal, and each soul belongs to a potential sinner.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
CT T Hucker TP J T P JC T P JH J ZD Schipper, ed., Concordance du Tao-tsang: titres des ouvrages Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China Taiping jing (Z D, fasc. 74855 ; C T T 1101 ) Taiping jing chao (Z D, fasc. 746 47 ; C T T 1101 ) Wang Ming, Taiping jing hejiao Zhengtong daozang

252

Originally applied to 18th19th-c. French society in Foucault, Surveiller et punir, p. 104.

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